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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CICERO, Marcus Tullius.
De Officiis … libri tres, ex editione Oliveti Parisiis vulgata.
London, T. Payne, 1791.
First Payne edition, edited by Henry Homer (1753–1791). A friend of the writer and schoolmaster Samuel Parr since his days at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Homer produced editions of Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, Pliny the Younger, and others.
£450
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CICERO, Marcus Tullius.
De Officiis … libri tres. Item, de amicitia: de senectute: paradoxa: & de somnio Scipionis. Cum indice...
London, [Felix Kingston for] the Stationers’ Company, 1631.
London edition of the ‘greatest hits’ of Cicero for the early seventeenth century: De Officiis, ‘Laelius on friendship’, ‘Cato Major on old age’, the Stoic Paradoxes, and the Dream of Scipio from De Republica, with the notes of Erasmus, who was famously an admirer of...
£600
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CICERO, Marcus Tullius.
Marcus Tullius Ciceroes three Bookes of Duties to Marcus his Sonne, tourned out of Latine into English,...
[London, Richard Tottel,] 1583.
Sixth edition of Grimald’s Cicero, first published 1556. De Officiis was perhaps the most pervasive piece of classical writing in early modern Europe – the second or third book to be printed in Europe, standard reading in England from at least the sixteenth century, recommended in Eliot’s...
£3200
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CLARENDON, Edward Hyde, Earl of.
The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, begun in the Year 1641. With...
Oxford, Printed at the Theater, 1702[–4].
First edition of Clarendon’s monumental History of the Civil War, with a presentation inscription by his son Henry Hyde, the second Earl (1638–1709).
£3250
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CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA (Titus Flavius CLEMENS).
Omnia opera.
Paris, Sebastien Nivelle, 1572.
A thoroughly annotated copy of this early edition of the complete works of Clement of Alexandria, in the Latin translation of Gentian Hervet. Clement lived and wrote in the second and third centuries, one of the most important interpreters of Christianity within an established Greek philosophical...
£4750
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[CLIFFORD, Jeronimy].
The case of Jeronimy Clifford, merchant and planter of Surinam. Paper, No. 160.
[London, n.p., 1711].
First extended account of Clifford’s long-running legal battle with the Dutch West India Company in Surinam over Corcabo, his sugar plantation. The earlier publications had been just four pages long; this work furnishes us with plantation account details and testimonies, chronologically arranged with...
£650
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CLIFFORD, Jeronimy.
The case and replication of the legal representatives of Jeronimy Clifford; a British subject; and late merchant...
London, C. Say, 1763.
First edition of this comprehensive summary of Clifford’s long-running legal battle with the Dutch West India Company in Surinam over Corcabo, his sugar plantation, from the Macclesfield library, including a handsome folding ‘map of the colony of Surinam’.
£850
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[COAL].
The miner’s journal. Coal statistical register, for 1869… also, statistics of the iron trade… rates of wages… together...
Pottsville, PA, Miners’ Journal Office, 1869.
First edition, rare. A synopsis of the trade, transportation and activities connected with coal between Pennsylvania and New York. The Miner’s Journal tracked the pulse of American coal trade, including importations of foreign coal and exports of domestic material. It prided itself on circulating ‘more...
£125
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COBDEN-SANDERSON, Annie; Marianne TIDCOMBE, editor.
The Prison Diary of Annie Cobden-Sanderson, with a Facsimile of the Original.
[Marlborough,] Libanus Press, 2017.
The imprisonment of Annie Cobden-Sanderson, daughter of the famous Victorian statesman Richard Cobden, prompted a wave of letters of protest to the newspapers, giving the women’s suffrage campaign the major boost she had hoped for. The ten women with whom Cobden-Sanderson was arrested (and of whom...
£25
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[COCHRAN, Charles B.]
OSTROWSKA, Wanda and Viola G. GARVIN. London’s Glory.
London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1945.
First edition, a poignant collection of paintings of war-torn London by the Polish artist-in-exile Wanda Ostrowska, accompanied by extracts from her own writings and narrative by Viola Garvin.
£75
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COMTE, Auguste.
Cours de philosophie positive.
Paris, Bachelier, 1830-1842.
First edition, an attractive set, of Comte’s principal work, the outline of positivism. In the course of six volumes Comte sets out the terms of a new sociology and its status in relations to the other fields of knowledge. In fact it is in the forty-seventh lesson that the neologism ‘sociologie’...
£1600
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COMTE, Auguste, and Albert CROMPTON (editor).
Confessions and Testament of August Comte: and his correspondence with...
Liverpool, Young, 1910.
First edition in English of Comte’s Confessions, which first appeared with his ‘testament’ in French in 1884. These take the form of ‘Twelve Saint Clotildes’, a series of annual confessions which he recited to his muse’s grave. Clotilde de Vaux was a divorced woman whom Comte met...
£80
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[CONDORCET, Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de].
Vie de Monsieur Turgot.
‘Londres’, [i.e. Paris?, n.p.], 1786.
First edition of the sole example of Condorcet’s economic writings to employ mathematics. Condorcet’s use of ‘the sign ∫ as a sign of summation of finite quantities’ is an ‘innovation’ in his ten-page footnoted discussion of the various ways ‘in which indirect taxation could be replaced...
£200
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CONSTANT, Benjamin.
Discours de M. Benjamin Constant à la Chambre des Députés.
Paris, Ambroise Dupont, 1827-8.
First edition of a collection of speeches delivered to the Chamber of Deputies by Benjamin Constant whose eloquence and oratorical skill led him to become a leader of the parliamentary block known first as the indépentants and later as libérals. One of the first liberals to go by the name, he was the...
£150
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CONTI, Natale.
Mythologiæ, sive explicationis fabularum, libri decem. In quibus omnia propè naturalis & moralis philosophiæ...
Frankfurt, the heirs of André Wechel, 1584.
Scarce Frankfurt edition of the Mythologiae of Natale Conti (Natalis Comes), first published Venice 1567. It was a standard reference work for classical mythology in the later Renaissance, treating the corpus as allegories that syncretized ancient philosophy and could thus be decoded by...
£950
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COPE, Walter, Sir.
‘Enchiridion. Certaine breife Remonstrances offered unto his Ma[jes]tie … Touching divers Inconveniences...
[London?], 1613.
A fine, unpublished manuscript treatise on the balance of trade, dedicated to James I, by the administrator, politician, and collector Sir Walter Cope (c. 1553–1614).
£11000
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[CORFU.]
Notificazione. Uffizio della segreteria del governo. Corfu, 7 Maggio 1816 …
Corfu, ‘en te typographia tes dioikeseos’, [1816].
A seemingly unrecorded bilingual broadside, in parallel Italian and Greek, reporting on cases of plague in the district of Leftimo on the island of Corfu, issued during the British protectorate in May 1816 and printed in the capital at the government press.
£375
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CORRADO III TRINCI, Lord of Foligno.
Letter in his name in Italian to Cipriano, ‘lieutenant of the territory of Trevi’,...
Foligno, 9 February, no year but c. 1430s.
The family of the Trinci ruled over Foligno, first as independent princes and then as vicars of the church from 1305 to 1439. The sender of the present letter is probably the third Corrado, last of the dynasty, ‘detested for his cruelty’ (Litta, Celebri famiglie Italiane vol. I fasc. 6,...
£600
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CORTÈS, Gioacchino.
Dissertazione anti-Bolgeniana sopra la carità difesa dal suo autore l’abate Gioacchino Cortes contro...
Rome, Salomoni, 1793.
First edition of this response to and attempted refutation of Bolgeni’s Della carità o amor di Dio by the Spanish Jesuit Joachim Cortès. Della carità was the best-known work of the Jesuit theologian and controversialist Gianvincenzo Bolgeni, in which he had argued, against...
£450
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COSTER, François.
Piarum et Christ. institutionum libri tres, in usum sodalitatis B. Mariae Virginis primum conscripti, nunc...
Douai, Jean Bogard, 1582.
Very rare Douai edition of this devotional work by the Belgian Jesuit François Coster (1532–1619), first published at Cologne in 1578, illustrated with woodcuts of the Crucifixion and Our Lady of Sorrows.
£675