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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MACAULEY, Auley.
A Sermon on the peculiar Advantages of Sunday Schools: preached in the Parish Church of St. Paul, Bedford, on...
London, Printed for C. Dilly … and sold by the Booksellers of Bedford, Northampton, and Leicester, for the Benefit of the Institution. [1792].
First edition of a rare sermon to promote Sunday Schools by the uncle of Thomas Babington Macaulay and brother of the abolitionist Zachary Macaulay.
£250
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MADDOX, Isaac.
A Sermon preach’d in the Parish-Church of Christ-Church, London; on Thursday April the 30th, 1741 being the Time...
London, M. Downing, 1741.
First edition, containing the often-lacking second part of the work, providing a tabular account of the charity schools in and around London and Westminster in 1741.
£650
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MALCOLM, Alexander.
A Treatise of Musick, speculative, practical and historical. Containing an explication of the philosophical...
London, J. Osborn and T. Longman, F. Fayram, and E. Symon, 1730.
First London edition of the first history of music in English by a British author; it is a reissue of the Edinburgh-printed first edition of 1721 with a cancel title-page and the dedication removed.
£1100
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MALTHUS, Thomas Robert.
An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a View of its past and present Effects on human Happiness;...
London, Johnson, 1803.
Second edition, first published 1798. Called the ‘Great Quarto’, it is the first to bear Malthus’s name and is so revised by Malthus as to be ‘regarded by [him] as a substantially new work’ (ODNB).
£5750
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MALTHUS, T. R.
An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a View of its past and present Effects on human Happiness; with an...
London, John Murray, 1817.
Fifth edition, ‘with important additions’, of one of the most influential works in the history of economic thought, a handsome copy owned and possibly annotated by the economist and industrialist Robert Hyde Greg, a critic of Malthus’s.
£2200
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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
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MASTAI FERRETTI, Conte Paolino.
Notizie storiche delle accademie d’Europa, con una relazione piu’ diffusa dell’accademia...
Rome, I Lazzarini, 1792.
Only edition, and a lovely copy, of this finely printed history of the academies of Europe, produced in honour of Pope Pius VI’s reestablishment of, and support for the Accademia nobile ecclesiastica (now the Pontifical Ecclesiastic Academy), which had been founded in 1701, was suppressed in 1764,...
£850
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MEAD, Richard.
A Short Discourse concerning pestilential Contagion, and the Methods to be used to prevent it … The third Edition.
London, printed [by William Bowyer] for Sam. Buckley … and Ralph Smith … 1720.
‘Third edition’ of the most famous medical tract on the plague scare of 1720–1, written at the request of James Craggs, the secretary of State, following the bubonic outbreak in Marseilles in late 1719.
£375
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[MEDICAL DICTIONARY.]
Dictionary of medical terms, Latin-English wordlist, and list of abbreviations and contractions.
[S.l., early 1800s].
An interesting manuscript compiled by an anonymous medical student, comprising a dictionary of medical terms, from ‘Abdomen’ to ‘Zoster’, followed by a glossary of Latin terms with their English equivalents (including ‘Machina electrica – the electric machine’), and ending with a...
£450
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MILBANK, Augustus Sussex.
A Treatise upon the political & social Condition of Europe, from the Fall of the Roman Empire, down to...
[Richmond, M. Bell for] London, Messrs Hatchard & Son, and Richmond, M. Bell, 1847.
First and only edition of a rare Yorkshire-printed treatise of social history by an amateur historian and educational enthusiast, inscribed by the author to the Countess of Sandwich.
£125
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MILLAR, John.
Observations concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society. Under the following Heads: I. Of the Ranks and Condition...
London, J. Murray, 1773.
Second London edition, ‘greatly enlarged’, first published 1771.
£1750
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MILL, John Stuart, and Edward Livingston YOUMANS.
Новѣйшее образованiе: его истинныя цѣли и требованiя....
St Petersburg, Izdanie “Russkoi knizhnoi torgovli”, 1867.
First edition in Russian of these two works, published in the original that same year.
£100
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[MONS.]
...
Mons, J. B. Varret, 1748.
First and only edition, very rare, of this history of the Sunday school in Mons, established for the Christian education of the boys and girls of the city and supported by the Canonesses of St Waltrude among other benefactors.
£975
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MONTE DI PIETÀ DI MILANO.
Piano, e regole per il buon governo della congregazione de’ creditori della Regia Ducal Camera di...
Milan, Giuseppe Richino Malatesta, [1753].
An uncommon description of the workings of an eighteenth-century Italian charitable organisation, bound in a contemporary paste paper wrapper.
£400
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MORE, Hannah.
Strictures on the modern System of female Education. With a View of the Principles and Conduct prevalent among Women...
London, T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1799.
Third edition, published in the same year of the first, of this hugely popular educational manual by the evangelical Bluestocking writer and philanthropist Hannah More (1745–1833).
£950
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MORGAN, Lewis Henry.
Ancient Society or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism to Civilization.
New York, Holt, 1877.
First edition. Morgan’s influential work was considered by Marx and Engels to be putatively supportive of materialist history. Marx’s notes on this book were reputedly the source for Engels’s Origins of the Family, of private Property and the State, published in German in 1844. Morgan...
£400
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[MURDER.]
Arrest de la cour du Parlement, qui condamne Pierre Guyon, jardinier, à étre rompu vif ... dans la Place du Pilory...
Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1778.
Very rare decree documenting the crimes and punishment of one Pierre Guyon, a murderous gardener from Poitiers; a case of green fingers turning blood-red.
£175
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[MURDER.]
A Warning Piece against the Crime of Murder: or, an Account of many extraordinary and most providential Discoveries of...
[London,] Printed for Wiliam Owen … ; and R Goadby, in Sherborne. [1752.]
First edition, very scarce, a fascinating compendium of grim crimes both real and clearly fictional, many ‘providentially discovered’ in a dream, revealed by returning ghosts, or uncovered ‘after many years concealment’, published in the context of the Murder Act of 1752 which introduced...
£300
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[NAPOLEON.]
Lois et réglemens pour les lycees.
Paris, ‘de l’imprimerie de la République, an XII,’ 1803.
Rare first edition of this extremely interesting collection of laws and regulations governing secondary education in France, reflecting the historic changes enacted between 1801 and 1803 by Napoleon as First Consul, in particular the establishment of lycées.
£175
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[NATIONAL SOCIALISM] [OCCUPIED FRANCE]
Finis les mauvais jours! Papa gagne de l’argent en Allemagne! [The bad days are over!...
[Paris], Office de Répartition de l´Affichage, 1943.
Rare, encouraging the voluntary relocation of French workers from impoverished and semi-starved France to Germany factories.
£350