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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[SATIRE.]
L’Art de plumer la poulle sans crier.
Cologne [i.e. the Netherlands?], Robert le Turc, 1710.
First(?) edition of this scarce collection of twenty-one satirical anecdotes, mostly about the law, money and women, exposing hypocrisy and abuses of authority. Several stories mention the lieutenant-criminel of Paris, Jacques Deffita. In one story a poor lawyer escaping a storm stumbles upon...
£1250
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SAY, Jean-Baptiste.
Olbie, ou Essai sur les moyens de réformer les moeurs d’une nation.
Paris, Deterville and Treuttel & Wurtz, ‘an VIII de la République’ [1799–1800].[bound with:][ANON]. Principes politiques, par F. M....
Presentation copy with the author’s inscription of the rare first edition of Say’s utopia, written in response to a competition organised by the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques on the question: ‘Quelles sont les institutions capables de fonder la morale chez un peuple?’. Say...
£5000
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SAY, Léon.
Les solutions démocratiques de la question des impots. Conférences faites à l’École des science politiques …...
Paris, Guillaumin et Cie, 1886.
First edition. Léon Say (1826–1896), grandson of Jean-Baptiste Say, ‘became one of the most prominent statesmen of the French Third Republic. He served as Finance Minister from 1872 to 1879, and again in 1882, overseeing the largest financial operation of the century – payment of war reparations...
£125
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SAY, Léon.
[cover title: ] La Société coopérative est la meilleure des caisses d’épargne.
Lille, L. Danel, [1866?].
First edition. Léon Say (1826–1896), grandson of Jean-Baptiste Say, ‘became one of the most prominent statesmen of the French Third Republic. He served as Finance Minister from 1872 to 1879, and again in 1882, overseeing the largest financial operation of the century – payment of war reparations...
£75
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SCHREBER, Daniel Gottfried.
Sammlung verschiedener Schriften, welche in die öconomischen, Policey- und cameral- auch andere Wissenschaften...
Halle, im Verlag Johann Jacob Curts, 1755-65.
First edition, a complete set of this collection of agro-economical articles and essays. Schreber was the first professor of economics at Leipzig. His Abhandlung von Kammergütern appeared in 1743. In these collected essays he assembled his own treatises and those of other authors to provide a systematic...
£1250
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SCHREBER, Johann Christian.
Botanisch-Oeconomische Abhandlung vom Grasbaue. Preisschrift, welche die, in den öconomischen Nachrichten,...
Leipzig, Johann Wendler, 1763.
First separate edition of this prize-winning treatise on grass and hay, first published in the Ökonomische Nachrichten.
£75
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SCHUMACHER, H., Professor.
Autograph letter signed (‘H. Schumacher’) to a colleague.
Bonn, den Coblenzerstrasse 83, 10 February 1915.
Schumacher’s spirited response to a colleague who had asked for Schumacher’s opinion on a letter he intended to publish in an American newspaper. Schumacher charges him with completely misunderstanding both the political situation and public opinion in the USA. He criticises the German attitude towards...
£150
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SCIALOJA, Antonio.
I Principî della economia sociale esposti in ordine ideologico … II. edizione riveduta, corretta ed aumentata.
Turin, Giuseppe Pomba, 1846.
Second edition, enlarged. Antonio Scialoja (1817–1877) studied at Naples, publishing the Principi della economia sociale (1840) there when he was only 22. It proved a great success in Italy and elsewhere, receiving many editions in Italian and a translation into French in 1843. In 1846, the year of...
£75
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SCOTT, Sir Walter.
Copy of a letter to Colin Mackenzie.
Abbotsford, 26 July [1827].
Scott here discusses Scottishness with his long-term correspondent Colin Mackenzie. He discusses the gradual loss of the Scottish accent amongst the educated classes of Scotland, who are sent to England for their education, remarking, ‘It is repugnant to my feelings to destroy what seems one of [the]...
£100
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SELKIRK, Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of.
Observations on the present state of the Highlands of Scotland, with a view of the causes...
London, Longman et al., 1805.
First edition. ‘In 1792 … Selkirk [1771–1820] undertook an extensive tour through the Scottish Highlands and became convinced that emigration thence was unavoidable. He also recognised the need of some controlling hand to direct it. He first conceived the idea of a settlement at the Red River (what...
£425
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SENECA, Lucius Annaeus.
L. Annei Senecae opera, et ad dicendi facultatem, et ad bene vivendu[m] utilissima, per Des. Erasmum Roterod....
Basel, ‘in officina Frobeniana’, 1529 [(colophon:) Basel, Johann Herwagen, March 1537].
Second Erasmus edition of the moral essays and letters of Seneca, owned and annotated by Ludovicus Carinus (d. 1569), friend and later foe of Erasmus himself.
£5000
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[SERRÉ, Jean-Baptiste-Adrien-Joseph.]
Livre utile aux négocians de l’Europe, contenant les réductions des argents dont ils...
Paris, chez Valade; Brussels, chez Emmanuel Flon, 1774.
£100
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[SEVILLE.]
Mercantile contract between Sebastián de Baeza of Seville and Hernán López de Segovia, almost certainly relating...
Seville, 25 July 1576.
A commercial document from the heyday of Seville’s trade with the Indies. Drawn up for Sebastián de Baeza, a resident of the barrio of San Bartolomé in Seville, the document recapitulates a previous agreement of 25 June 1576 between, on the one hand, Hernán López de Segovia and, on...
£1200
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[SEX-WORK.]
Arrêtés des 3 et 4 Juin 1833, concernant les femmes et filles livrées à la prostitution publique.
Toulon, ‘de l’imprimerie d’Aug. Aurel’, 1833.
An apparently unrecorded set of decrees intended to regulate sex-work in the French port of Toulon on the Mediterranean coast, ‘for the maintenance of good morals and public health’.
£475
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SHAGINYAN, Marietta Sergeevna.
O blazhenstve imushchago: poeziia Z.N. Gippius [On the bliss of the propertied: the poetry of...
Moscow, “Al’tsiona”, [1912].
First edition, a critical essay by Shaginian published in the same year as Orientalia (advertised here), the collection of poetry that brought her fame.
£350
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SHAGINYAN, Marietta Sergeevna.
Puteshestvie v Veimar [Journey to Weimar].
Moscow & Petrograd, Gosizdat, 1923.
First edition of Shaginyan’s account of a pilgrimage to Weimar, presented by the author ‘to the respected Vladimir Pavlovich Pirogov in dear memory’ (trans.).
£600
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SHIPLEY, Hannah.
Manuscript on trade, commerce, and accounting.
[England, c. 1800.]
An attractive manuscript, written by one Hannah Shipley, discussing trade and commerce with practical examples of commercial accounting.
£500
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SHKAPSKAIA, Maria Mikhailovna.
Krov’-ruda [Blood-ore].
St Petersburg & Berlin, Epokha, 1922.
First edition of a collection of twenty-one poems by Maria Shkapskaya (1881–1952).
£300
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SIDGWICK, Henry.
The development of European polity.
London, Macmillan, 1903.
First edition, published posthumously and edited by Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick. A collection of a series of lectures delivered by Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) on the development and evolution of European polity from the earliest known, i.e. Greek and Roman, through to the ‘constitution-making’ 19th century.
£100
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SIMEONI, Gabriele.
Comentarii di Gabriello Symeoni Fiorentino sopra alla tetrarchia di Vinegia, di Milano, di Mantova, et di Ferrara ...
Venice, Comino da Trino di Monferrato, 1546.
Scarce first edition of Gabriele Simeoni’s (1509–1575) political history of the most powerful city-states of sixteenth-century Italy – Venice, Milan, Mantua, and Ferrara – with full-page genealogical diagrams of the Visconti, Gonzaga, and d’Este families.
£550