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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.

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  1. THOMSON, John.

    Illustrations of China and its People. A Series of two Hundred Photographs, with letterpress descriptive of the...

    London, Sampson Low &c, 1873–1874.

    A good copy of this rare work (vol. I marked second edition, the rest first editions), showing superb images of Imperial China including rare portraits of high government officials as well as a large number of architectural and scenic views; this item ranks amongst the most spectacular photographically...

    £35000

  2. [JUSTICES OF THE PEACE.]

    The Boke of Justices of Peas the Charge with all the Processe of the Cessions, Warrantes Supercedias &...

    [Colophon: London, Richard Pynson], [1505–6?].

    First edition(?), very rare, of the first printed guide for Justices of the Peace, issued with a short guide to land law.

    £27500

  3. 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

  4. MELCHIOR, Christian. 

    ‘Synechia sive summa lectionum Plutarchicarum a domino conrectore huius scholae Salderianae praelectarum. ...

    [Brandenburg an der Havel, 1620.] 

    An unpublished early seventeenth-century manuscript recording lectures on Plutarch’s pedagogical work On the Education of Children, bound with a scarce printed edition of the same text, and a rare edition of the poems of Theognis and other Greek lyric poets, each with numerous marginal and...

    £6500

  5. WEBER, Johann Adam.

    Discursus curiosi et fructuosi [ad praecipuas totius litteraturae humanae scientias illustrandas accommodate …].

    [Salzburg, Johann Baptist Mayr, 1690.]

    Third Salzburg edition of Weber’s wide-ranging discourses, in a handsome Bavarian binding for the Abbot of Ettal, Bernhard I Oberhauser, attributable to the monk Brother Gregor, a trained bookbinder from Hungary.

    £6000

  6. 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

  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. [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

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. FATHERS LEGACY (The):

    or Counsels to his children. In three Parts. Containing the Whole Duty of Man, I. To God. II. To himself....

    London, Printed for Henry Brome … 1678.

    First and only edition, very scarce, of a fine courtesy book written by an anonymous former soldier, framed as a father's guidance to his children, this copy owned by the wife of the English Ambassador to France.

    £1850

  12. 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

  13. [ORDE, John Powlett.]

    A collection of 111 original compositions in Latin (and occasionally Greek) verse and prose.

    Eton, 1818–1820.

    A delightful insight into classical education at Eton, where until the mid-nineteenth century Greek and Latin were the only official classroom subjects, and Latin composition was considered a key accomplishment.

    £1750

  14. [PARKER, Richard Green; Junkichi KATAYAMA 片山 淳吉, editor.]

    物理階梯 [Butsuri kaitei; 'A Guide to Physics'].

    Gifu Prefecture, Ministry of Education, Mizunoesaru/Jinshin [i.e. 1872].

    First edition, very rare, of Japan’s first elementary science textbook, a major catalyst for the introduction of Western physics after the Meiji Restoration.

    £1750

  15. [CARTOUCHE.]

    The Life and Actions of Lewis Dominique Cartouche: who was broke alive upon the Wheel at Paris, Nov. 28. 1721. N.S....

    London, printed for J. Roberts … 1722.

    First edition in English, published in the same year as the French original, of this life of the French highwayman Louis Dominique Bourguignon, alias ‘Cartouche’, broken on the wheel in 1721.

    £1750

  16. BENTLEY, Richard, et al.; [Charles BURNEY, editor].

    Richardi Bentleii et doctorum virorum epistolae, partim mutuae. Accedit Richardi...

    London, William Bulmer, 1807.

    First edition of the correspondence of Richard Bentley, a large paper copy splendidly bound and presented by Charles Burney to the British Museum’s Keeper of Manuscripts, with attractive later provenance.

    £1750

  17. 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

  18. [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 to the Palace of True Happiness, written by a woman for a readership of women, our copy with the eighteenth-century ownership inscription of a female reader.

    £1500

  19. MARSILIUS of Inghen, GILES of Rome, and ALBERT of Saxony.

    Marsilii de genera[tione et corruptione]. Commentaria fidelissimi...

    [(Colophon:) Venice, [Boneto Locatello for] the heirs and partners of Ottaviano Scoto, 19 June 1520.]

    A trio of late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century commentaries on Aristotle’s books on generation and corruption, composed at the University of Paris by Giles of Rome, Marsilius of Inghen, and Albert of Saxony, demonstrating the international nature of medieval scholarship.

    £1500

  20. [WALLOON CHURCH AMSTERDAM.] 

    Ordres et reglemens de la maison des orphelins, des vieillards, et des vielles femmes de l’eglise...

    Amsterdam, David Pierre Humbert, 1772.

    Very rare set of regulations governing the charitable house for orphans and the elderly founded by the Walloon Church in Amsterdam in 1631, with manuscript additions updating the lists of its male and female governors up to 1795.

    £1450