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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[BOUDIER DE VILLEMERT, Pierre-Joseph.]
L’Andrometrie, ou examen philosophique de l’homme. Par Monsieur l’Abbé de Villemaire.
Paris, chez Brunet, 1753.
First editions of two scarce works by the philosopher, moralist, and Parisian avocat Boudier de Villemert (1716–1801), best known as the author of L’Ami des Femmes, Le monde joué involving visits from extra-terrestrials both in ancient times and in the eighteenth century.
£2500
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[BOUTREUX D’ESTIAU, Jacques de.]
De la puissance roialle sur la police de l’Eglise.
Paris, Pierre Durand, 1625.
A pair of uncommon works defending the French king’s authority over the Church, in a binding for Jacques-Auguste II de Thou and later in the renowned Caumartin library.
£950
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BRACCIOLINI, Francesco.
Della croce racquistata, poema heroico libri XV.
Paris, René Ruelle, 1605.
First edition of Francesco Bracciolini’s epic poem modelled on Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1591), narrating the recovery of the True Cross by the seventh-century Byzantine Emperor Heraclius from the Persian Emperor Khosrow II, and its return to Jerusalem in 629–630 AD. It is possible...
£1500
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[BRISTOL.]
The Bristol Contest, being a Collection of all the Papers published by both Parties, on the Election, 1754.
Bristol, ‘sold by the Printing-Office … and by J. Palmer’, [1754].
Extremely rare first edition of this Bristol-printed political pamphlet, bound with the first edition of a French work on pyrotechnics used both for spectacle and for war.
£650
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BROGGI, Ugo.
Die Axiome der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung.
Göttingen, Dieterischen Universitäts-Buchdruckerei, 1907.
Rare first edition of this doctoral dissertation on the solution of Hilbert’s sixth problem, written under the supervision of David Hilbert. The problem posed tried to axiomatize those branches of science in which mathematics is prevalent. Broggi here aims to establish a system with which to prove...
£200
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BROOKLYN ETHICAL ASSOCIATION.
[Cover title: Evolution]. Man and the State. Studies in applied sociology. Popular lectures...
[N.p., n.d., n.d.].
First edition of this broadly political collection of essays on economics, race relations, the Democratic and Republican parties, and suffrage, inter alia, likely from the library of a Californian senator.
£150
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BROUGHAM, Lord Henry.
Lives of men of letters and science who flourished in the time of George III … with portraits, engraved...
London, Charles Knight and Co., 1845-47.
First edition of the first volume (1845), later edition of the second volume (dated 1847, first published 1846) of Brougham’s lives which includes Voltaire, Hume, Davy, Johnson, and Adam Smith to name a few stars in the firmament of the reign of George III, or, in Brougham’s terms, the ‘Augustan...
£125
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BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett.
Poems before Congress …
London: Chapman and Hall … 1860.
First edition of a slender collection of seven poems on the cause of Italian independence, and one attacking slavery in the United States (‘A Curse for a Nation’). The Congress of the title had been planned for Paris in January 1860, but Austria withdrew on learning that Napoleon III meant to use...
£200
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[BRUGES.]
‘Copie van de Cueren en Ordonnantien omme de Schoolmeesters, Schoolvrauwen, Librariers ende Prenters der Stede van...
Bruges, [c. 1656].
A remarkable manuscript containing the rules of the guild of ‘schoolmasters and mistresses, booksellers, and printers’ in the Belgian city of Bruges, providing a unique window onto the book trade and education there in the first half of the seventeenth century. The existence of a single guild...
£4250
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[BUNBURY, Henry William.] ‘GAMBADO, Geoffrey’.
Annals of Horsemanship, containing Accounts of accidental Experiments and experimental...
London, W. Nicholson for W. Baynes, 1808.
Third edition of Bunbury’s satirical work with humorous etchings. First published in 1791 and often presented as a continuation of Bunbury’s Academy for grown Horsemen (published in 1784 also under the name Gambado), the Annals of Horsemanship is a parody of Arthur Young’s...
£475
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BUONACCORSI, Biagio, and Niccolò VALORI.
Diario de’ successi piu importanti seguiti in Italia, & particolarmente in...
Florence, Filippo & Jacopo Giunta, 1568.
First edition of an insider account of Medici politics by Biagio Buonaccorsi (1472–1522), colleague and confidant of Machiavelli, bound with the first edition of Malespini’s history of Florence and owned by Claude-Enoch Virey, secretary to Henri II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé.
£1000
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BURGESS, Ernest W, editor.
The Urban Community.
Chicago, University Press, 1927.
Second edition, first published 1926.
£40
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[BURY, Charlotte, Lady.]
The Exclusives. In three Volumes ...
London, Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley ... 1830.
First edition of this celebrated society novel written after the enormous success of Marianne Spencer Stanhope’s Almack’s (1826), a roman à clef centred on the fashionable assembly rooms in St James’s.
£950
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BUXTON, Thomas Fowell.
An Inquiry, whether Crime and Misery are produced or prevented, by our present System of Prison Discipline...
London, [J. M’Creery] for John & Arthur Arch, J. Butterworth & Son, and John Hatchard, 1818.
Third edition, published the same year as the first, of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton’s influential Inquiry into the British prison system.
£195
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CAGNAZZI, Luca de Samuele.
Analisi dell’ economia privata e pubblica degli antichi relativamente a quella de’ moderni …
Naples, Società filomatica, 1830.
First edition. Cagnazzi (1764–1852) was originally a teacher of mathematics by profession, receiving a professorship at Naples in 1806. ‘His life was full of trouble; having been concerned in political intrigues, he had to flee from Naples and, after wandering, nearly always on foot, through Italy...
£125
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CAIROL, M. de.
Réflexions historiques et politiques, sur les revolutions qu’a essuyé l’agriculture sous différens gouvernemens,...
Amsterdam and Toulouse, Joseph Robert, 1786.
Very rare essay on the state of agriculture in France, and in particular in the Languedoc, examining the ways in which the policies of various governments (from the Romans and Visigoths onwards) have affected agricultural production, the current situation, and the ways in which matters could be...
£450
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CALVERT, William John.
The demand for labour is wealth … Supplement to monopoly and taxation vindicated against the errors of...
Newark, M. Hage and London, Longman … 1822.
Very rare first edition of Calvert’s supplement to his own work, Monopoly and taxation vindicated etc., published in 1821. Calvert wrote anonymously in the name of ‘a Nottinghamshire farmer’, but here uses his name. The supplement argues that Britain’s wealth and military success against France...
£250
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[CAMBRIDGE.]
Tract volume of nine scarce works of poetry, including two installation odes on the occasion of HRH William Frederick...
London and Cambridge, 1765-1823.
A sammelband of Cambridge poetry, including:
£1200
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CAMPBELL, Thomas.
Gertrude of Wyoming; a Pennsylvanian Tale. And other Poems.
London, T. Bensley, for the Author ... 1809.
First edition of Campbell’s most re-printed poem, based on a massacre of American patriots by British forces and their Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) allies in 1778. Its portrayal of ‘pastoral innocence evoked only to be destroyed by the savagery of war (embodied in this case by Mohawk allies of...
£650
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CAMPOMANES, Pedro Rodriguez (Antonio Conca y Alcaraz, translator).
Trattato della regalia d’ammortizzazione, nel quale si dimostra,...
Parma, Filippo Carmignani, 1767.
First Italian translation of this influential treatise on the property rights of the Church and the state in Spain by the Spanish philosopher, economist, and historian Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes (1723-1803).
£350