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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. GUASP Y PUJOL, Manuel.

    Apuntes de Economia Política. Cursos de 1866 a 1867 – 1867 a 1868 en la Universidad de Barcelona.

    [Barcelona], 1868.

    Unique witness to the lectures of political economy taught by Manuel Guasp y Pujol at Barcelona in the mid-1860s: a ponderous manuscript, endowed with the depth of numerous corrections and additions, amounting to an unpublished full-blown treatise on political economy, with topics such as labour, capital,...

    £850

  2. GUAZZO, Marco.

    Historie di M. Marco Guazzo di tutti i fatti degni di memoria nel mondo successi dal 1524 sino a l’anno 1549....

    Venice, Giolito, 1549.

    First edition thus, this copy owned by the future Pope Clement XII, of a remarkable history of recent and contemporary events, first published in 1540 and here updated by almost ten years, resuming the account of world event and Italian politics and including references to American history from 1522.

    £3600

  3. HADLEY, Arthur Twining.

    Economics. An account of the relations between private property and public welfare.

    New York and London, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896.

    First edition. ‘In Economics Hadley went further than Marshall by explicitly developing the interrelations between property rights, economic evolution and economic efficiency. Hadley utilized the real world examples of the fisheries and mining to demonstrate the impact of ill-defined property rights...

    £175

  4. [HAKEWILL, William].

    The Manner of holding Parliaments in England, collected forth of our ancient Records … With the stately...

    [London,] Printed in the Yeare, 1641.

    First (and only lifetime) edition, signed on the title-page by the notorious forger of ‘Shakespeare’s Library’, William Henry Ireland (1775–1835).

    £950

  5. [HAMBURG.] 

    A sammelband of material relating to the Great Fire of Hamburg. 

    [Germany, 1842.] 

    A fine and unusual volume of materials relating to the Great Fire of Hamburg of May 1842, comprising a long article by Joseph Mendelssohn published over five issues of Der Komet, special issues of several periodicals devoted to the disaster, a rare poem by Margarethe Hedwig Hülle, and...

    £850

  6. [HAMILTON, Alexander, James MADISON, and John JAY].

    The Federalist: A Collection of Essays written in Favor of the new Constitution,...

    New York: Printed and sold by John and Andrew M’Lean … 1788.

    First edition in book form of The Federalist Papers, the single most important work of American political philosophy, a normal paper copy, very rare in the original boards, uncut and largely unopened. Volume II is in a mixed state, with the error ‘Letter LXXX’ rather than ‘LXX’...

    £220000

  7. HAREL, Charles.

    Ménage sociétaire ou Moyen d’augmenter son bien-être en diminuant sa dépense, avec indication de quelques...

    Paris, Bureau de la Phalange, à la librairie Sociale, 1839.

    1. First edition of this work by the entrepreneur and inventor Charles Harel (1771-1852), a friend and disciple of Charles Fourier’s. This plan describes Harel’s project for the founding of a community of 200 celibates: a utopia of communal life detailing rules (‘love’, ‘the library’etc.)...

    £975

  8. HARLINGUE, L. [Albert].

    'Baktiaris Persans'.

    [Iran, c. 1905-1911].

    An impressive press image of the Bakhtiari tribe – revolutionaries in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911 – here posing in strength with their weapons. Their leader, Sardar As’ad Bakhtiari (1856-1917), was a key figure in the Iranian revolution; under his command (and with German...

    £1500

  9. [HARRINGTON, James.]

    The Commonwealth of Oceana.

    London, printed for J. Streater, 1656.

    First edition, first issue. ‘Oceana presents Harrington’s vision of the ideal state: an aristocracy of limited, balanced powers. Harrington believed that democracy is most stable where a strong middle class exists and that revolution is a consequence of the separation of economic and political...

    £3750

  10. HARRIS, James, later first Earl of Malmesbury.

    A small group of documents.

    [1779–1785].

    Harris (1746–1820) was ‘the leading British diplomatist of the final quarter of the eighteenth century’, noted for his skills as a linguist, and his popularity and easy social skills.

    £325

  11. HEBER, Reginald, and Nicolas BARKER (editor).

    A Letter from India.

    The Roxburghe Club, 2020.

    'I do not expect that with fair prospects of eminence at home, you should go to the Ganges for a mitre,’ wrote Sir Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, President of the Board of Commissioners for Indian Affairs, in 1819 to Reginald Heber at Hodnet in Shropshire, but in vain. Despite a growing reputation...

    £100

  12. [HEMSTERHUIS, François.] 

    Alexis ou de l’age d’or. 

    Riga, Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1787. 

    First edition of Hemsterhuis’s philosophical dialogue on a ‘golden age’, an influential work of pre-Romantic aesthetics. 

    £375

  13. HENNEQUIN, Pierre.

    Nouveau cours de rhétorique, à l’usage de la jeunesse des deux sexes; dédié à sa Majesté l’Impératrice...

    Moscow, Auguste Semen, 1818.

    Only edition, very uncommon, of this guide to rhetoric by the Moscow-based French grammarian Pierre Hennequin (1772–1849), explicitly designed for both sexes and dedicated to the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna (1759–1828).

    £950

  14. HERODOTUS.

    Historiae Libri IX: et de vita Homeri libellus. Illi, ex interpretatione Laurentio Vallae adscripta; hic ex interpretatione...

    Frankfurt, Heirs of Andreas Wechel (Claude de Marne and Johann Aubry), 1594.

    Freidrich Sylberg’s edition of Herodotus in the Latin translation by Lorenzo Valla, based on the text published by Estienne in 1566, along with extracts from the Greek physician Ctesias’s Persika, a history of Persia, and Indika, the first book to be devoted entirely to India, Estienne’s...

    £1500

  15. [HERVEY, Elizabeth.]

    The Mourtray Family. A Novel …

    London: Printed by Millar Ritchie … for R. Faulder … 1800.

    First edition of the penultimate novel by Elizabeth Hervey (c. 1748–1820), elder half-sister of the writer William Beckford – her father, Francis Marsh, had died and her mother Maria (née Hamilton) remarried another Jamaica plantation owner, William Beckford senior, who also died...

    £2500

  16. HERYNG, Zygmunt.

    Teorja i praktyka ekonomji.

    [Warsaw, G. Centnerszwer], 1897.

    First edition, very rare, of Heryng’s Theory and practice of economics. Zygmunt Heryng, Polish economist and political activist, was deeply concerned with economics as a science. He saw it as a systematic and conscious pursuit of efficiency in resource allocation in relation to targets. One of the...

    £150

  17. HEXHAM, Henry. 

    A Tongue-Combat, lately happening betweene two English Souldiers in the Tilt-boat of Gravesend, the one going...

    Printed at London [i.e. Holland].  1623. 

    First edition, written in reply to a rare pamphlet with a near-identical title by Richard Verstegan [or Rowlands], an intelligence agent in the Netherlands for the English Jesuits.  Verstegan’s original Toung-Combat comprised a dialogue between the pro-Catholic Red Scarf and the Protestant...

    £1650

  18. HIEROCLES of Alexandria.

    Ύπομνηνα εις τα των Πυθαγορειων επη τα χρυσα … commentarius in...

    London, J. R. [John Redmayne] for J. Williams, and Henry Dickinson, Cambridge, 1673.

    London edition of the only complete work of Hierocles, his commentaries on the Golden Verses, a valuable epitome of Pythagorean ethical teachings, printed here in the original and in a Latin translation. According to tradition they were put into their present form by Lysis, one of the most...

    £500

  19. HOLLANDER, Jacob Harry.

    Economic Liberalism.

    New York and Cincinnati, The Abingdon Press, [1925].

    First edition, dedicated ‘to the memory of Herbert B. Adams, who first taught me the meaning of liberalism’.

    £50

  20. HOLLAR, Wenceslaus, attributed.

    [Portraits of celebrated Courtezans.]

    Nineteenth century?

    A famous series of portraits depicting Restoration-era London courtesans, long attributed to Hollar, but that attribution rejected by Pennington and New Hollstein.

    £1200