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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. PERRIN, M.

    [Jean Baptiste]. Fables amusantes, avec une Table générale & particulière des Mots & de leur Signification en Anglois,...

    A Londres chez B. Law & Fils …T. Cadell … P. Elmsly … 1793

    Seventh edition of a popular educational work first published in 1771. Jean Baptiste Perrin (fl. 1767-98) worked as a private French tutor in Dublin. He was a prolific author of works for learning French (the advertisements at the end list 18 of them, several commended by the Monthly Review). The 140...

    £75

  2. PERRY, Ralph Barton (1876-1957), American philosopher.

    Two autograph letters signed and one typed letter signed (‘Ralph Barton...

    Cambridge (Mass.), 1945-1946.

    Perry, who became a leading realist philosopher, had intended to train for the ministry and viewed the academic career he achieved as a vocation. He was active within Harvard and the wider field of the American Philosophical Association and campaigned on a variety of causes. These letters are written...

    £500

  3. PERUCCI, Francesco.

    Pompe funebri di tutte le nationi del mondo, raccolte dale storie sagre et profane.

    Verona, Francesco Rossi, 1639.

    First edition of Perucci’s account of the funeral practices of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, extensively illustrated with engravings copied in reverse from Porcacchi’s 1574 Funerali antichi di diversi popoli, et nationi, inscribed by a Scottish antiquary and documented book collector....

    £975

  4. PETTY, William, Sir.

    Another essay in political arithmetick, concerning the growth of the City of London: with the measures,...

    1682. London, printed by H.H. for Mark Pardoe, 1683.

    First edition, exceptionally scarce – indeed unique in its uncut and unbound state – of Petty’s first work of political arithmetic, a landmark work of statistics, demography, and economics.

    £12000

  5. PHILIDOR, François-André Danican (William Stopford KENNY, translator). 

    Analysis of the game of chess … illustrated...

    & J. Allman, 1819. 

    First edition of William Kenny’s translation of L’analyse du jeu des Échecs.  For many years Kenny (1787/8–1867) ‘kept a classical school at 5 Fitzroy Street, Fitzroy Square, London, later moving to Richmond, Surrey.  In 1856 Kenny stated that he had been a teacher for forty...

    £200

  6. PHILIDOR, François-André Danican. 

    Chess analysed: or instructions by which a perfect knowledge of this noble game may in a...

    London, J. Nourse and P. Vaillant, 1750. 

    Rare first edition in English of the most important theoretical work on chess of the eighteenth century.  Philidor, by far the best player of his era, spent much of his time in England after 1747, hence the London publication of the first edition of his Analyze des echecs in 1749. 

    £1250

  7. [PHILOSOPHY.] 

    Philosophy course on logic. 

    [Brussels, early eighteenth century?] 

    An elegant manuscript philosophy course on logic.  Following a brief introduction (Prolegomenon in logicam, ff. [1]r-[2]r), the first part of the treatise is devoted to the cognitive faculty of the human mind (De facultate cognoscitiva mentis humanae, ff. [2]r-[53]r),...

    £375

  8. PICK, G. Vesian.

    Digest of political economy: the principles of John Stuart Mill.

    London, Swan Sonnerschein & Co., 1893.

    Second edition (first 1892) of Pick’s epitome of J.S. Mill’s Principles of political economy. Stating his aim as to ‘present a bird’s-eye view of Political Economy’, with a secondary intent of being used by students as a companion volume to the treatise itself, Pick aims to bring a new simplicity...

    £100

  9. PIECK, Henri C.

    10 Dagen Die De Wereld Deden Wankelen.

    Amsterdam, Skovino, 1927.

    A rare lithograph of Pieck’s dramatic illustration for Ten Days that Shook the World (October in English), a silent film commissioned by the Soviet government to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the October Revolution. Made by the director of Battleship Potemkin (1925), Sergei Eisenstein, the...

    £300

  10. PIEROTTI, A. 

    Il cervello e la difesa delle donne sestine giocose ... precedute da indirizzo, e dedica in vario metro. 

    Florence, N. Fabbrini, 1842. 

    First and only edition, very rare, of this misogynistic poem by the Florentine poet Pierotti, in which he pretends to explore the female brain with reference to Galen, accusing women of, for example, greed, theft, cunning, vanity, and irascibility.  The second part is a somewhat patronising defense...

    £375

  11. PIERTZ, Leonhard (Praes.) and Johann Ernst SCHLERETH (Resp.).

    De sacramentis in specie, Eucharistia et Poenitentia quaestiones...

    Würzburg, Johann Michael Kleyer, 1703.

    A good copy of this rare Würzburg dissertation on the sacraments of the Euchasist and Penance, under the Jesuit professor Leonhard Piertz (1662–1741). The dissertation discusses when the Eucharist was instituted, what verbal formulae are necessary for consecration, whether the Eucharistic sacrifice...

    £175

  12. PITTER, Přemysl.

    Domovu i exilu [Home and Exile].

    London, Čechoslovák-FCI, [1956].

    First editions, association copies, of a series of radio transcripts by the humanitarian Protestant lay preacher and educator Přemysl Pitter (1895–1976), often described as the ‘forgotten Czech Schindler’, owned by the Czech-Jewish poet, novelist, and Holocaust survivor H.G. Adler.

    £850

  13. PLANAS, D. Eusebio.

    Historia de una mujer. Album de cincuenta cromos.

    Barcelona, Juan Aleu y Fugarull, 1880.

    First edition. A chronicle in pictures of the life of a beautiful modern woman, and her adventures and misadventures with men: in front of fashionable Madrid shop-fronts, in her boudoir, on the balcony, on the stage and in the dressing-room, at balls and dinner parties, in a train, the Alps, the 1878...

    £2000

  14. PLINY the Younger.

    Epistolarum libri X & panegyricus.

    Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, 1640.

    First Elzevir edition, handsomely bound for the Irish politician Thomas Wogan Browne.

    £450

  15. POEMS ON AFFAIRS OF STATE:

    from the Time of Oliver Cromwell, to the Abdication of K. James the Second. Written by the greatest...

    Printed in the Year 1702

    Fourth edition of this popular collection of witty verse and political satire, with the second edition of State-Poems continued (1697). Much of the poetry collected here was initially circulated in manuscript because of its political subject matter (which includes the Dutch wars, the Popish Plot, and...

    £425

  16. PONTANO, Giovanni.

    De rebus coelestibus.

    Naples, ‘ex officina Sigismundi Mayr Germani : summo ingenio artificis Ioannetto Salodio : Antonio Vuerengrundt : Evangelista Papiensi :...

    First editions of three works on cosmology, ethics, and astrology by the Neapolitan humanist, poet, and polymath Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), an important sammelband from the celebrated library of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), professor of natural philosophy and natural history at the University...

    £11000

  17. POPE, [Alexander]. 

    Of the Use of Riches, an Epistle to the Right Honorable Allen Lord Bathurst. 

    London, J. Wright for Lawton Gilliver, 1732. 

    First edition, first issue, with p. 13 uncorrected and the erratum on p. 20. 

    £200

  18. PORTER, Anna Maria.

    The Village of Mariendorpt. A Tale … in four Volumes …

    London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown … 1821

    First edition of a rather melodramatic novel set in Bavaria towards the end of the Thirty Years War. It proved just what Longman was looking for, and a sequel, Roche-Blanche, followed in 1822.

    £1200

  19. PORTER, Jane.

    Duke Christian of Luneburg; or, Tradition from the Hartz … in three Volumes …

    London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green … 1824.

    First edition. One of the earliest exponents of the historical novel, Porter enjoyed enormous popularity during her lifetime. Duke Christian of Luneburg was her sixth book, which she modestly described as ‘a little traditionary [sic] sketch of an illustrious hero’. Set in sixteenth-century...

    £650

  20. [PORTUGAL.]

    Memorias economicas da Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, para o adiantamento da Agricultura, das Artes, e da Industria...

    Lisbon, Officina da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1789 1815.

    First edition. The long period of publication accounts for the rarity of complete sets of this important periodical, containing articles on industry, agriculture, political economy, statistics and general social and geographical matters. They exhibit the continued influence of Physiocratic ideas after...

    £750