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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. MUSIL, Robert.

    Vinzenz und die Freundin bedeutender Männer. Posse in drei Akten.

    Berlin, Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, 1924.

    Rare first edition of Musil’s (1880–1942) early farce, featuring an abduction, extramarital affairs, and a staged murder.

    £500

  2. MYLIUS, Georg, and Michael HOPF.

    De visitatione ecclesiastica.

    Jena, Tobias Steinmann, 1593.

    First edition, rare, of an early work on the nature, scope, limits and jurisdiction of canonical visitations, the visitationes ecclesiasticae, a key element in the outline of jurisdiction, responsibility and control established by the Catholic Reformation in the last decades of the sixteenth century.

    £200

  3. MYRDAL, Gunnar.

    Asian Drama. An inquiry into the poverty of nations.

    New York, Pantheon, 1968.

    Third printing, published in the same year as the first edition, of this important study which took ten years to complete.

    £65

  4. [NAPLES.]

    Manuale della contribuzione fondiaria compilato per disposizione di S. E. il ministro segretario di stato delle finanze....

    Naples, Tipografia Flautina, 1835.

    First edition. In two parts, the first of which sets out the basis of property taxation, while the second treats the collection and transmission of sums owing, this manual prints the legislation in force in the nearer Neapolitan part (always described as ‘This side of the Lighthouse’, whereas Sicily...

    £200

  5. [NAPOLEON.]

    Napoleone, per la grazia di Dio e per le costituzioni, imperatore de’ Francesi, re d’ Italia, abbiamo decretato,...

    Milan, Stamperia Reale, [1806].

    Scarce decree regarding ‘civil and punitive justice’ issued by Napoleon for the newly created Kingdom of Italy. The text covers, inter alia, judges, tribunals, courts, clerks, attorneys, and ushers.

    £125

  6. [NAPOLEONIC ITALY.] 

    Alla società delle gentilissime signore di Moncalieri dilettanti del giuoco del tavolazzo. Sonetto bernesco-morale...

    Turin, Giacomo Fea, 1799.

    An unrecorded sonnet addressed to the Society of the Gentlewomen of Moncalieri, a town just south of Turin whose castle is one of the Savoy Residences, and in particular to the ‘Abbess’ of the society, by the corps of soldiers stationed in the town shortly after the Battle of Marengo.

    £575

  7. [NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH.]

    Regularization of Business Investment. A conference of the Universities-National Bureau...

    Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1954.

    First edition. ‘The question this book raises and helps to answer is whether the entire responsibility for preventing the next depression is to be left to government, or whether a leading role can be assumed by private enterprise, through regularization of investment expenditures. Twenty-six...

    £120

  8. [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

  9. [NAUDÉ, Philippe, attr. author].

    Histoire abrégée de la naissance & du progrez du Kouakerisme avec celle de ses dogmes.

    Cologne, Pierre Marteau, 1692.

    First edition of the earliest work on the Quakers to be published in French. In his survey of English Quakerism the author gives voice to widespread contemporary English criticisms of the movement, radicalizing the charge of Socinianism into one of ‘pure deism’ and ultimately atheism.

    £750

  10. [NECKER, Jacques.]

    Eloge de Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Discours qui a remporté le prix de l’Académie Françoise, en 1773.

    Paris, J.B. Brunet, 1773. [bound with:]

    First edition of Necker’s first work. Necker (1732–1804) was the opponent of Turgot (whose position he was to take over in 1777) in action as well as in theory, agreeing with Forbonnais on the side of State-regulation. The encomiastic function of this work, his first book, is in fact a thin cover...

    £750

  11. NEPOS, Cornelius. 

    De vita excellentium imperatorum.  Interpretatione et notis illustravit Nicolaus Courtin … in usum serenissimi...

    Paris, Frères Barbou, 1726. 

    An attractive later Delphin edition (first 1675) of Cornelius Nepos’s Lives.  The only surviving work by the first-century BC biographer Cornelius Nepos, the Vitae excellentium imperatorum once formed part of a broader De viris illustribus.  The Lives include Themistocles,...

    £275

  12. NEWTON, Isaac.

    Opuscula Mathematica, philosophica et philologica. Collegit partimque Latine vertit ac recensuit Joh. Castillioneus...

    Lausanne and Geneva, Bousquet & soc., 1744.

    First edition of Newton’s collected works, a major tool in the dissemination of Newton’s science and a major publication in the history of science.  The edition, edited and introduced by the Pisa alumnus Giovanni Salvemini da Castiglione, contains twenty-six works (which, while having appeared...

    £3500

  13. NIEHANS, Jürg.

    Der Gedanke der Autarkie im Merkantilismus von einst und im Neomerkantilismus von gestern.

    Zürich, H. Girsberger, 1945.

    First edition of Niehan’s work on the idea of self-sufficiency in the age of Mercantilism, published as volume 37 of the series Zürcher Volkswirtschaftlicje Forschungen, under the editorship of M. Saitzew. Niehans (1920-2007), a distinguished economist, taught at the Universities of Zurich, Johns...

    £40

  14. NIEUHOF, Jan; Athanasius KIRCHER; and John OGILBY, translator.

    An Embassy from the East-India Company of the United...

    London, John Macock for the author, 1669.

    First English edition, beautifully illustrated, recounting the Dutch traveller Jan Nieuhof’s journey as part of Peter de Goyer and Jacob de Keizer’s embassy to Peking between 1655 and 1657. Having previously been employed by the Dutch West India Company in Brazil, Nieuhof joined the Dutch...

    £4000

  15. NIEUHOF, Jan, and Georg HORN (translator). 

    Legatio Batavica ad magnum Tartariae chamum Sungteium, modernum Sinae...

    Amsterdam, Jacob van Meurs, 1668. 

    First edition in Latin, beautifully illustrated, of Nieuhof’s account of his travels in China between 1655 and 1657, one of the most important early modern non-Jesuit studies. 

    £5000

  16. NIEUHOF, Jean, and Jean LE CARPENTIER (translator). 

    L’ambassade de la compagnie orientale des provinces unies...

    Leiden, Jacob de Meurs, 1665. 

    Lavishly illustrated first French edition of Nieuhof’s travels through China from 1655 to 1657. 

    £3500

  17. [NOLHAC, Jean-Baptiste-Marie.]

    Réflexions sur la punition des grands crimes, considérée dans ses rapports avec la morale, extraites...

    Lyon, Louis Perrin, 1836.

    First and only edition, inscribed from the author. An extensive essay against the death penalty, and especially against public executions by Jean-Baptiste-Marie Nolhac (1770-1878) using arguments derived from ‘la digité de la nature humaine et du danger des spectacles sanglants’, written in response...

    £150

  18. [NOVA SCOTIA.]

    A Fair Representation of His Majesty’s Right to Nova-Scotia or Acadie. Briefly stated from the Memorials of the...

    London: Printed by Edward Owen … 1756.

    First edition. ‘Résumé très bien fait de toute la question des frontières de l’Acadie entre la France et l’Angleterre; mais écrit au point de vue de l’Angleterre seulement’ (Gagnon).

    £750

  19. [OBSTETRICS and GYNAECOLOGY.]

    ‘De morbis mulierum’. 

    Italy, 1779.

    A most interesting unpublished manuscript on diseases in women, examining their causes, symptoms, and cure. 

    £950

  20. [OCCUPIED FRANCE]

    Finis les mauvais jours! Papa gagne de l’argent en Allemagne! [The bad days are over! Daddy is earning money...

    [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.

    £300