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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PATON, Joseph Noel, Sir.
Address read at the Delivery of the Prizes to the Students of the School of the Honourable the...
[London, Clay & Sons, 1875].
Presentation copies of two very rare academic addresses, that by Sir Noel Paton (one of 20 copies printed according to a note on the title-page) inscribed ‘John Skelton Esq., with N.P.’s kindest regards’, the Tulloch with a slip inscribed ‘From the Author’ tipped in.
£350
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PAZZI, Antonio de, and Torquato TASSO.
Stanze inedite di Antonio de Pazzi e di Torquato Tasso in biasimo ed in lode delle...
Venice, Picotti, 1810.
Scarce first edition of verses ‘in blame and in praise of women’ by Antonio de Pazzi and Torquato Tasso, edited by the eminent antiquary and librarian Jacopo Morelli (1745–1819) from a previously unpublished manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, and dedicated to Baron Antonio Mulazzani...
£200
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PELLISSON, [Paul].
Histoire de l’Academie Françoise par M. Pelisson [sic], nouvelle edition, augmentee des deux discours...
Amsterdam, Jean Frederic Bernard, 1717.
An attractive prize copy of Pellisson’s history of the Académie française, with a printed presentation label from the Jesuit college in the Occitan town of Carpentras, outside Avignon.
£150
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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[PHILOSOPHY.
Philosophy course on logic. Brussels, early eighteenth century?]
[Brussels, early eighteenth century?]
An elegant manuscript philosophy course on logic, likely produced at a Jesuit college, where logic was one of the three philosophy courses taught along with natural philosophy and metaphysics.
£375
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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