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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. [RENNEVILLE, Sophie de (?).]

    Contes a Aglaé, ou la jeune moraliste.

    Paris, Caillou, c.1820.

    Very uncommon edition, possibly the first, of this collection of educational contes moraux, sometimes attributed to the prolific children’s author and journalist Sophie de Renneville (1772–1822).

    £325

  2. RENNIE, Neil.

    Pocahontas, Little Wanton: myth, life and afterlife.

    [London], Quaritch, 2007.

    Pocahontas – meaning ‘Little Wanton’ or playful one – is famous for something she may or may not have done four hundred years ago: rescue the English colonist John Smith from execution by her father, Powhatan, the Indian paramount chief of the Virginia area. Pocahontas, Little Wanton investigates...

    £25

  3. RENTSCH, Carl, Edler von Ehrenthal.

    Die Staatswirtschaft nach Naturgesetzen.

    Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1819.

    First edition. Rentsch’s political economy offers an in-depth analysis of concepts such as income and expenditure, value and cost, market value, and competition; particular attention is paid to coin, notes, circulation, public and private credit, and exchange.

    £150

  4. RHOADS, James Evans.

    Autograph letter signed (‘James E. Rhoads’) to Henry Horniman.

    Philadelphia, 22 July 1869.

    A letter from the first president of Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia. Rhoads (1828–1895) helped establish the college as a nondenominational, internationally respected school, and the first higher education institution to offer graduate degrees to women.

    £100

  5. RICARDO, David.

    Zasady ekonomji politycznej i podatkowania.

    Warsaw, Jan Cotty, 1919.

    Second and most complete Polish edition of On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (first published in 1817), in a new translation by Dr. M. Bronstein. The 1826 first Polish translation by Stanislaw Kunatt was based on the translation into French by the Portuguese journalist Francisco Solano...

    £150

  6. [RICARDO, David.]

    Report from the select committee on the usury laws.

    London, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 28 May 1818.

    First edition of the report from the select committee ‘appointed to consider the effects of the laws which regulate or restrain the interest of money, and to report their opinion thereupon to the House’ (p. 3). The question of the Usury Laws had first been raised in the House of Commons by Brougham...

    £200

  7. RICCI, Giovanni and PORTA, Ercolano.

    Storia della missione francescana e del Vicariato Apostolico del Hunan meridionale dalle sue...

    Bologna, Stabilimenti tipografici riuniti, 1925.

    First and only edition of this history of the Franciscan Mission in South Hunan from its establishment to 1924, with particular attention to the persecution of the Christians during the Boxer Rebellion and the following years of restoration and progress of the mission. The appendix comprises letters,...

    £450

  8. [RICHARD, Charles-Louis.]

    Lettres d’un archevêque, à l’auteur de la brochure intitulée: Du droit du souverain sur les biens-fonds...

    A Cologne, 1770.

    First edition, uncommon, of this response to an anticlerical essay by the Chevalier de Cerfvol by the Dominican theologian and anti-philosophe Charles-Louis Richard (1711–1794). De Cherfvol had argued against the wealth of the clergy, and in particular of the religious orders, and proposed a means...

    £200

  9. RICHARDSON, Ralph.

    Coutts & Co. Bankers Edinburgh and London, being the memoirs of a family distinguished for its public services...

    London, Elliott Stock, 1901

    Second edition, revised and enlarged, narrating the instrumental role of the Coutts family in establishing a magnificent system of banking in Scotland.

    £40

  10. RIDOLFI, Luca Antonio. 

    Aretefila, dialogo, nel quale da una parte sono quelle ragioni allegate, le quali affermano, lo amore...

    Lyons, Guillaume Rouillé, 1562. 

    Annotated copy, once owned by a music book collector, of the third edition (first 1557) of a remarkable Renaissance philosophical dialogue on the nature of love which marked the culmination of the very divisive ‘questione d’amore’ hotly debated in sixteenth-century literature. 

    £2800

  11. RIPLEY, Percy.

    A short history of investment.

    London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1934.

    First edition of this work aimed at a British audience of bankers, members of the Stock Exchange and City workers, charting the history of investment from early times and the Elizabethans through to 1933, passing both prosperity, and tragedy and national debt. The work is dedicated to the financial journalist...

    £50

  12. ROBERTS, Henry.

    The dwellings of the labouring classes, their arrangement and construction, illustrated by a reference to the model...

    London, Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes, 1850.

    First edition of one of the most important publications on philanthropic housing by the architect and housing reformer Henry Roberts (1803-1876).

    £250

  13. ROBERTSON, Dennis Holme.

    Wages. The Stamp Memorial Lecture 1954.

    London, The Athlone Press, 1954.

    First edition, corrected issue.

    £15

  14. ROSE, George.

    Observations respecting the public expenditure, and the influence of the Crown … Third edition.

    London, T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1810.

    The third of four editions published in 1810. ‘A rabid Anti-Bullionist’ (Stephens, p. 42), Rose (1744–1818), here, ‘for Pitt’s greater glory … illustrate[s] the decline of the influence of the crown since 1782 by reference to the elimination of places and sinecures. His conclusions...

    £30

  15. ROSINI, Giovanni. 

    Alla memoria di Maria Antinori vedova del Marchese Consalvi di Macerata morta improvvisamente la sera del XIV...

    Pisa, Niccolò Capurro, 1852. 

    Scarce first and only edition of this poem in memory of Maria Antinori, widow of the Marchese Consalvi, on her death at the age of thirty-five, penned by the poet, playwright, historical novelist, art historian, and art collector Giovanni Rosini (1776–1855), this copy presented by the author to...

    £275

  16. ROUQUET, Jean-André. 

    The present State of the Arts in England.  By M. Rouquet, member of the Royal Academy of Painting and...

    London, for J. Nourse, 1755. 

    First edition in English, published in the same year as the French original, from the library of the great Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790). 

    £19500

  17. [ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques.] 

    Le Devin du village, intermede, représenté devant Sa Majesté a Fontainebleau, le Mecredi 14 Novembre...

    [Paris,] Pierre-Robert-Christophe Ballard, 1770. 

    Rare edition of a later lifetime performance of Rousseau’s influential opera, The Village Soothsayer, in an attractively unsophisticated sammelband of court operas. 

    £375

  18. ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques. 

    Du contract social; ou Principes du droit politique ... 

    Milan, François Pogliani, 1796. 

    Rare first edition printed in Italy of Rousseau’s Contrat social. 

    £1750

  19. [ROUSSEL DE LA TOUR, Claude Pierre GOUJET, and Abbé MINARD, editors.]

    Extraits des assertions dangereuses et pernicieuses...

    Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1762.

    First edition of this systematic selection of Jesuit writings intended to demonstrate the many dangerous ideas endorsed by the Order, arranged under headings including probabilism, simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, magic, astrology, idolatry, perjury, homicide, and regicide.

    £1500

  20. [ROYAL FISHERY COMPANY.]

    A Collection of Advertisements, Advices, and Directions, relating to the Royal Fishery within the British...

    London, printed for H.M. and sold by J. Whitlock, 1695.

    First edition. The Royal Fishery Company, incorporated in 1662, had great trouble finding subscribers. Initially, Charles II offered £9000 as an incentive to investors but on these only raising £3680 he withdrew his undertaking, instead allowing a lottery to aid the Company’s fortunes. After attempts...

    £200