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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. [DELAMARCHE, Alexandre, cartographer; Bernard COUDERT, lithographer.]

    ‘Atlas’.

    Paris, Legay, [c. 1889].

    An attractive set of large educational jigsaw maps showing the world, Europe, and France, preserved in its original allegorical box.

    £875

  2. DEPARCIEUX, Antoine.

    Essai sur les probabilités de la durée de la vie humaine; d’où l’on déduit la manière de déterminer...

    Paris, chez les frères Guerin, 1746.

    A large, crisp, and illustrious copy of the first edition of a classic of statistical science: it is the first to define expectation of life – which Deparcieux calls ‘la vie moyenne’ – and the first to contain life tables for men and women.

    £3000

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. FERGUSON, Adam.

    An Essay on the History of Civil Society.

    Edinburgh, A. Millar and T. Cadell, 1768. 

    Third edition, corrected: the edition owned by Thomas Jefferson.

    £700

  7. FERRI, Giovanni.

    Discours sur les principes de l’education lycéenne, prononcé à l’inauguration du Lycée d’Angers, par...

    Angers, Frères Mame, 1806.

    Only edition, rare, of this speech by the Italian writer and educationalist Giovanni Ferri de St. Constant (1755–1830), on the inauguration of the Lycée at Angers.

    £225

  8. FIELDING, Henry.

    The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling …

    Paris: Printed by Fr. Amb. Didot the eldest, and sold by J. N. Pissot, and Barrois Junior … Booksellers. 1780.

    The first French edition in English of Fielding’s masterpiece, only the second English edition to be printed abroad (after Dresden, 1774). Here the text benefits from critical attention by Didot, who collated Murphy’s edition of Fielding’s Works with the last separate English edition.

    £425

  9. [FISCHER, Friedrich Christoph Jonathan, and Pierre-Gustave BRUNET (translator)].

    Les nuits d’érpeuve des villageoises...

    Paris, Jules Gay, 1861.

    First edition in French, numbered 26 of 100 copies, of this obscure study, first published in 1780 as Über die Probenächte der teutschen Bauernmädchen (‘On the Rehearsal Nights of Teutonic Peasant Women’). Brunet’s ‘postface’ builds on the comparisons made in Fischer’s original...

    £150

  10. [FRANKLAND, William.]

    A large collection of manuscript correspondence relating to the death of William Frankland.

    [Manchester, Slaidburn, and Blackburn, June 1886–May 1888].

    An interesting archive relating to the death of William Frankland, a Lancashire railway worker killed in a shunting accident, consisting largely of manuscript correspondence from his father’s landlords – two solicitors evidently working pro bono – fighting to obtain an insurance payout from...

    £650

  11. GAYOT DE PITAVAL, [François].

    Question d’estat: fille reclamée par deux meres.

    Paris, Nicolas le Gras, 1716.

    Very rare first edition of this account by the famous advocate François Gayot de Pitaval (1673–1743) of a 1709 case in which a midwife had substituted a newborn girl who was then claimed both by the real mother and the woman to whom the baby had been given.

    £350

  12. [GEOGRAPHY.]

    Primi principi di geografia ad uso de’ fanciulli.

    [(Colophon:) Bergamo, Pietro Lancellotti, 1753].

    Extremely rare second edition (first 1745) of this Bergamo-printed geographic catechism for young children.

    £375

  13. GILBRETH, Frank B.

    Motion Study. A Method for increasing the efficiency of the Workman.

    New York, D. Van Nostrand Company, 1911.

    First edition, rare, of this pioneering work in scientific management. The field of ‘motion study’ was developed by engineer Frank B. Gilbreth and his wife, psychologist Lillian M. Gilbreth, in order to increase the efficiency of work processes through methods that promoted the welfare of...

    £550

  14. GIOIA [or GIOJA], Melchiorre.

    Indole, estensione, vantaggi della statistica. Confutazione dell’ opuscolo che ha per titolo:...

    Risposta alle obbiezioni fatte alle Tavole statistiche. Milan, Pirotta and Maspero, March 1809.

    First and only edition of this rare work on the nature and necessity of statistics by Melchiorre Gioia, presented by the author to the former Minister for the Interior, Daniele Felici.

    £1250

  15. GIOJA, Melchiorre.

    Del merito e delle ricompense, trattato storico e filosofico ...

    Filadelfia, [n. p.], 1830 (vol. I); Lugano, Giuseppe Ruggia, 1830 (vol. II).

    Second edition (first published in 1818, a third followed in 1832) of this important work by the political theorist, economist, and champion of Italian unity, Gioja (1767–1829). ‘He contended in his best known work, Del merito e delle ricompense ..., which was inspired by Beccaria’s Dei delitti...

    £250

  16. GOSSELIN, Charles-Robert.

    Plan d’éducation, en réponse aux académies de Marseille et de Châlons, dont l’une a proposé...

    Amsterdam, 1785.

    A most interesting sammelband of three rare French works on education from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, promoting, inter alia, the appointment of more women teachers, better education for girls, and the use of visual aids in teaching mathematics.

    £875

  17. [GOURAUD, Stéphane, known as:] GURO, Stepan Andreevich, chevalier de.

    Rech’ o deistvii prosveshcheniia na sostoianie...

    St Petersburg, Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1826.

    First edition of an early speech on the importance of higher education, delivered by the rector of the recently founded University of St Petersburg in his native French (and in a somewhat florid style, to judge from the Russian translation by Nikita Butyrsky, a fellow academic and translator of...

    £400

  18. GREGORY, John.

    A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters … the second Edition.

    London, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, and Edinburgh, W. Creech, 1774.

    ‘Second edition’ of Gregory’s Legacy to his Daughters, published immediately after the first, written following the death of the author’s wife in 1761 and designed to provide posthumous guidance for his two daughters, whom he brought up ‘in a philosophical simplicity’ (ODNB)...

    £275

  19. GROSSI, Vincenzo.

    Fra i pelli-rosse d’America: curiosità etnografiche.

    Turin, La Letteratura, 1888.

    Very rare only edition of a pamphlet about native peoples of North America by the ethnographer and geographer Grossi.

    £250

  20. GROUCHY, Nicolas de. 

    Praeceptiones dialecticae, Nicolao Gruchio Rotomagensi authore.  Disputatio eiusdem, quid de nomine dialectices...

    Paris, Gabriel Buon, 1563. 

    An apparently unrecorded edition of Grouchy’s abstract of his lectures on logic and Aristotelian dialectic.  The philologist Nicolas de Grouchy (1510–1572) spent twelve years in Bordeaux (1535-47) as professor of rhetoric at the Collège de Guyenne (the top class was called ‘Classe de Rhétorique’),...

    £750