Advanced search

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.

Sort by
Author
Price
Date
Title

  1. MARX, Karl.

    W kwestii Żydowskiej.

    Warsaw, [“Monografia”] for Instytut Wydawniczy “Renaissance”, 1938.

    First edition to be printed in Poland, the second in Polish (first, London, 1896) of Marx’s controversial article Zur Judenfrage ('On the Jewish Question'), which appeared first in 1844 in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher.

    £280

  2. MARZAGLIA, Gaetano.

    Fascetto di pratiche matematiche spiegate alle persone popolari per uso del comercio umano, e civile, in questa...

    Verona, Dionisio Ramanzini, 1780.

    A lovely copy of the second edition, considerably augmented from the first of 1754, of this book of applied mathematical problems by the Veronese mathematician Gaetano Marzaglia (or Marcegaglia, 1716–1787), heavily influenced by the work of Wolff, who provides the motto to the book, and whose works...

    £650

  3. [MASCHERANA, Girolamo.]

    Concordia tra la società e la religione ossia Difesa del culto cattolico contro chi lo calunnia in contrasto...

    Milan, Cesare Orena nella stamperia Malatesta, 1798.

    Rare second edition, printed in the same year as the equally rare first, of this curious defence of religion in the light of the constitution of the Cisalpine Republic, in which the author seeks to demonstrate the compatibility of Catholicism with the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution and...

    £375

  4. 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

  5. MAURIZI, Maria Luisa.

    Morali e divote riflessioni a tutti utilissime e specialmente alle persone claustrali scritte dalla serva...

    Rome, Tipografia della Pia Unione alle Terme, 1833.

    Uncommon first edition of this collection of meditations on the religious life, by the Roman nun Maria Luisa Maurizi (born Giacinta Gertrude Maurizi, 1770–1831), and published posthumously at the behest of her spiritual director, Agostino Romagnoli.

    £150

  6. MCCULLOCH, John Ramsay.

    Principes d’économie politique suivis de quelques recherches relatives à leur application et d’un...

    Paris, Guillaumin et Cie, 1851.

    First and only complete French translation, an association copy signed by the translator for the historian and member of the Académie française Pierre-François Tissot, and afterwards in the library of the economist and statist Michel Chevalier, who like Tissot held a chair at the Collège de France.

    £300

  7. McCULLOCH, John Ramsay, and Augustin PLANCHE (translator).

    Principes d’économie politique, suivis de quelques recherches relatives...

    Paris, A. Moussin for Guillaumin et Cie, 1863.

    French translation of McCulloch’s Principles. First published in 1825, the book provided the first synthetic modern definition of political economy and quickly established itself as one of the most referenced manuals on the subject. ‘For McCulloch was reserved the honour of presenting in a popular...

    £200

  8. MEADE, James Edward (1907-1995), economist.

    Autograph manuscript page and accompanying black and white passport photograph.

    [c. 1977].

    A leaf of autograph manuscript, presumably sent at the request of a collector, giving part of the text of Meade’s Nobel Memorial Lecture, ‘The meaning of “internal balance”’, which he delivered in December 1977. Meade writes: ‘To treat the whole of macro-economic control as a single subject...

    £150

  9. MEGUSCHER, Francesco.

    Memoria … in risposta al quesito additare la migliore e più facile maniera per rimittere i boschi nelle...

    Milan, presso l’I.R. Istituto, 1847.

    First edition of this comprehensive report on the best means to reverse the deforestation of the mountains of Lombardy, in a way that could be both environmentally sustainable and economically profitable.

    £950

  10. [MEIN, Robert.] 

    A Nominal Encomium on the Election of Magistrates at Michaelmass 1764. 

    [Edinburgh, 1764.] 

    First edition, very rare, a poem celebrating both the election of James Stuart of Binend as Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and the plans for the construction of Edinburgh New Town, of which building was to commence in 1767.  Typically for Mein he anagrammatizes his subject as ‘A Just Master’,...

    £450

  11. MELECRINIS, Maria Teresa. 

    Le voci del cuore a Maria Teresa Melecrinis dei baroni di Ioppolo e Coccorino che a di 6 luglio 1846...

    Naples, stamperia dell' Iride, 1846. 

    Very rare collection of odes and sonnets composed to mark the entry of Maria Teresa Melecrinis into the Benedictine monastery of San Paolo at Sorrento. 

    £175

  12. MENDELSSOHN, Moses.

    Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judenthum.

    Frankfurt and Leipzig, n. p., 1787.

    First posthumous edition, originally published in 1783 by Friedrich Maurer in Berlin, of this later work by Mendelssohn (1729–1786), in which he supports religious and political toleration, and advocates separation of church and state and civil equality for Jews. The work was reprinted as recently as 2001.

    £200

  13. MENDELSSOHN, Moses. 

    Philosophische Schriften. 

    Troppau, Joseph Georg Traßler, 1784. 

    Later edition, in an attractive contemporary binding, of the works of the German-Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786). First published in 1761 and here reprinted in the Silesian city of Troppau (now Opawa, Czechia), the collection includes Über die Empfindungen, Philosophische...

    £250

  14. MENDONÇA, Manoel Teixeira Cabral de.

    O Guarda-livros moderno ou curso completo de instrucções elementares sobre as operações...

    Lisbon, Impressão Regia, 1823.

    Second edition, corrected and expanded, of vol. I, first editions of vol. II and the Supplemento. The first volume provides a broad overview of the history of commercial exchange, including present practices. Mendonça states that his intention is to demonstrate the benefits of studying geography, insurance,...

    £300

  15. 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

  16. [MILITARY MEDICINE.]

    Volume of nineteen items concerning the treatment and care of war wounded.

    Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Milan, Paris, 1855-1875.

    A remarkable sammelband of scarce works on military medicine in French, Italian, Dutch and German, including an item on Florence Nightingale and treatises on gunshot wounds, the Red Cross, field hospitals, battlefield first aid, and ambulances. Several items bear inscriptions by Félix Hippolyte...

    £2250

  17. 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

  18. MILL, James.

    Elements of political economy … Second edition, revised and corrected.

    London, Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1824.

    Second edition of what Palgrave terms ‘Mill’s masterpiece’, extensively revised with alterations ‘too numerous to be specified’. This copy with a presentation inscription to Thomas Love Peacock signed ‘the author’.

    £1250

  19. MILL, John Stuart.

    The Subjection of Women.

    London: Longmans, Green, 1869.

    First edition of ‘the last of [Mill’s] great political tracts’ (ODNB), one of the most important and controversial treatments of women’s rights in the nineteenth century. Mill was heavily involved in the women’s suffragette movement, and in this work he argued ‘that the principle which...

    £3400

  20. MILL, John Stuart.

    A szabadságról. Fordította és az előszót írta Kállay Béni.

    Béni. Pest, Ráth Mór, 1867.

    Extremely rare (1 copy worldwide) first Hungarian edition of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. This translation, published in Pest, came out as the Habsburg Emperor accepted the consequences of a twenty-years-long strife for autonomy and rights on the part of Hungarian subjects. Mill’s anti-paternalistic...

    £975