Human Sciences

Contact Jonathan Harrison, Alfred Pasternack or Barbara Scalvini

Human Sciences at Quaritch embraces a wide range of books and manuscripts documenting the history of ideas from the earliest times up to about 1960. Our strengths are in the history of economic thought and in philosophy, but we also deal in law; finance and banking (including speculation, actuarial science and insurance); politics and political theory; sociology; psychology; agriculture; education; logic; and the theory of language.

Some notable items which have recently passed through our hands include the only known copy of the Communist Manifesto inscribed by Karl Marx, Rudolf Carnap’s annotated copy of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung), Joseph Penso de la Vega’s Confusion de Confusiones (1688, the first book to describe the practice of a stock-exchange) and a copy of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (4th edition, 1786), inscribed in Smith's own hand to Bonnie Prince Charlie's private secretary.

As well as dealing in individual books and manuscripts, we also offer collections. In recent years we have sold author collections of Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Thorstein Veblen, Emile Durkheim and Jeremy Bentham. Among subject collections we have offered are the Herwood Library of accounting literature (including Pacioli's Summa de Arithmetica, 1494, the first printed exposition of double-entry book-keeping); the philosophy of language; texts pertaining to the theory and study of language in the West, and the history of probability - the calculus of probabilities, statistics and their applications.

  1. PETTY, William, Sir.

    Another essay in political arithmetick, concerning the growth of the City of London: with the measures,...

    1682. London, printed by H.H. for Mark Pardoe, 1683.

    First edition, exceptionally scarce – indeed unique in its uncut and unbound state – of Petty’s first work of political arithmetic, a landmark work of statistics, demography, and economics.

    £12000

  2. STACEY, George et al.

    Daguerreotype and ambrotype portraits of Stacey and members of his family.

    London, 1850s.

    A handsome set of photographs of the English Quaker and abolitionist George Stacey (1787-1857), his second wife Mary née Barclay (1797-1876) and members of their extended family, taken by some of the finest portraitists in England at that time.

    £7500

  3. MÜNSTER, Sebastian.

    [Melechet ha-Dikduk] מלאכת הדיקדוק Institutiones grammaticae in Hebraeam linguam FR Sebastiani...

    [Basel,] Johann Froben, 1524.

    First edition of Sebastian Münster’s (1488–1552) important Hebrew grammar for students, bound with the first Latin edition of his translation of Elia Levita’s Composita verborum, both critical to the Christian scholarly reception of Hebrew grammatical works and here enhanced by extensive...

    £7000

  4. [JUVENILE.]

    [Library for Youth, or Book-Case of Knowledge, 10 vols.]

    London: Printed for John Wallis … by T. Gillet or J. Cundee … 1800.

    A fine complete set of Wallis’s ‘Library for Youth’ also known as the ‘Book-Case of Knowledge’, with all ten volumes in the first editions, dated 1800, and with two original designs (in reverse) for the frontispieces.

    £4750

  5. LIVY, Titus. 

    T. Livii Patauini […] ex XIIII Decadibus Historiae Romanae ab Urbe condita, Decades, prima, tertia, quarta,...

    Paris, [Michel Vascosan for] Oudin Petit, 1543 [– Michel Vascosan for himself and Oudin Petit, 1542]. 

    A much-praised edition of Livy’s History, reprinting Vascosan’s 1535 edition and including the philological corpus on Livy by the most established humanists of the time: Rhenanus, Gelenius, Grynaeus, Glareanus, Badius Ascensius, Valla, and Sabellico. 

    £3800

  6. [BESLER, Georg, Hector PÖMER, and Wolfgang VOLPRECHT.]

    Appellation unnd Beruffung der Pröbst unnd des Augustiner Priors...

    [Nuremberg, Friedrich Peypus,] 1524.

    First and only edition of this pamphlet by the Lutheran provosts and Augustinian prior of Nuremberg, appealing Bishop Weigand von Redwitz’s ruling to excommunicate them as heretics, with magnificent near-contemporary hand-painted and illuminated illustrations of the defendants’ arms.

    £3750

  7. [ABC.]

    Petite géographie amusante abécédaire nouveau offrant pour chaque lettre de l’alphabet une carte coloriée avec l’explication...

    C. Lehuby, ‘Librairie de l’enfance et de la jeunesse’, [1851].

    A charming and very rare ABC intended to teach children European geography, from A for Allemagne to Z for Zara in Dalmatia, published just a few years after the upheavals of the revolutions of 1848.

    £3750

  8. WEYLAND, John.

    Observations on Mr. Whitbread’s Poor Bill, and on the Population of England: intended as a supplement to A Short...

    London, J. Hatchard, 1807.

    First edition of each work. The barrister John Weyland (1774–1854) ‘was a well-to-do man whose landed possessions were extensive enough for him to be a magistrate in three counties, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Surrey’ (James, p. 372). In 1807, he wrote two works supporting the poor laws, entitled...

    £2800

  9. SOPHOCLES. 

    Aiax flagellifer.  Callimachi Cyrenaei Hymni in Iovem & Apollinem.  Ioanne Lonicero interprete.  Genetliacon divo...

    Basel, [Johann] Herwagen, August 1533. 

    First separate edition of Sophocles’s Ajax, with a facing Latin version by humanist philologist and theologian Johann Lonitzer (c. 1499–1569), printed with his translation of Callimachus’s hymns to Apollo and Zeus and his ode celebrating the birth of the future Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel...

    £2750

  10. [ABC.] 

    Alphabet mythologique. 

    [Paris,] lith. Durand, Ligny Jne. et Cie, [1840s?]. 

    A delightful and extremely rare ABC depicting figures from Greek and Roman mythology, alongside the Hindu river goddess Yamuna for the letter Y. 

    £2500

  11. DOLCE, Lodovico.

    Somma della filosofia d’Aristotele, e prima della dialettica.

    Venice, Giovanni Battista, & Marchio Sessa, & fratelli, [1565].

    First edition of this exposition of Aristotle’s dialectics, moral, and natural philosophy by one of the most significant poligrafi and artistic theorists of the cinquecento, intended for a non-specialist readership.

    £2500

  12. [PADUA.] 

    Statuta Patavina noviter impressa cum diligenti cura et castigatione et cum additionibus necessariis tam provisionum...

    Venice, Girolamo Giberti, 25 January 1528. 

    An attractive volume of statutes relating to the city of Padua in northern Italy, edited by the legal scholar Bartolomeo Abborario, with detailed annotations by a practicing local lawyer. 

    £2500

  13. STAUNFORD [Stanford], William, Sir.

    Les Plees del Coron, Divisees in Plusors Titles & Comon Lieux. Per Queux Home Pluis Redement...

    [London], Richard Tottell, 1583.

    The definitive edition, and that owned by Thomas Jefferson, of the first book devoted entirely to criminal law. First published posthumously in 1557 and based on Bracton and the Year Books, Les Plees deals in turn with offences, jurisdiction, appeals, indictments and defences. The third...

    £2500

  14. ÉCOLE DE MEDECINE DE MONTPELLIER.

    A collection of eighty-seven doctoral dissertations presented to and defended at the Medical...

    Montpellier, various publishers, 1800–1810.

    An extraordinary collection, bound up very soon after the last was published, of eighty-seven doctoral dissertations presented to the ancient medical school at Montpellier in the first decade of the nineteenth century.

    £1750

  15. ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques. 

    Du contract social; ou Principes du droit politique ... 

    Milan, François Pogliani, 1796. 

    Rare first edition printed in Italy of Rousseau’s Contrat social. 

    £1750

  16. FALCONER, William.

    Remarks on the Influence of Climate, Situation, Nature of Country, Population, Nature of Food, and Way of Life,...

    London, C. Dilly, 1781.

    First edition of Falconer’s pioneering contribution to the late Enlightenment’s study of environmental forces on society.

    £1750

  17. COMTE, Auguste.

    Cours de philosophie positive.

    Paris, Bachelier, 1830-1842.

    First edition, an attractive set, of Comte’s principal work, the outline of positivism. In the course of six volumes Comte sets out the terms of a new sociology and its status in relations to the other fields of knowledge. In fact it is in the forty-seventh lesson that the neologism ‘sociologie’...

    £1600

  18. BOSE, Johann Andreas.

    Io. Andr. Bosii introductio generalis in notitiam rerumpublicarum orbis universi. Accedunt eiusdem dissertationes...

    Jenae, Johann Bielke, 1676.

    First edition of a pioneering work of statistics and rare Americanum, by the philosopher and historian Johann Andreas Bose (1624-1674). Bose’s crucial intuition as a student of human societies lies in his advocacy of interdisciplinary investigations. His work ‘on all the states in the world’ marshalls...

    £1500

  19. [LOQUET, Marie-Françoise].

    Voyage de Sophie et d’Eulalie, au Palais du vrai bonheur; ouvrage pour servir de guide dans les voies...

    Paris, Charles-Pierre Berton, 1781.

    First edition of this rare utopian voyage written by a woman for a readership of women.

    £1500

  20. MILLAR, John.

    Observations concerning the distinction of ranks in society. Under the following heads: 1. Of the ranks and condition...

    London, Murray, 1773.

    Second London edition, ‘greatly enlarged’, first published 1771. The first section of Millar’s book is a study of matrilineal ‘savage’ societies, in which early social development counts most when it comes to kinship with the mother, is remarkably prescient (see Morgan, Systems)....

    £1450