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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. 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

  2. [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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. [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

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. [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

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. 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

  12. COWLEY, John.

    The Candidates Guide: or the Electors Rights decided. Shewing the Resolutions of the Honble the Commons of Great...

    London: Printed for J. Brindley ... and sold by Mrs. Dodd ... and by the Booksellers of London and Westminster: likewise in most great Towns...

    First edition of a guide to electoral rights ‘from the controverted Election for New-Castle-Under-Line, in April 1624, to that of Weymouth in May 1730’.

    £450

  13. [CUMBERLAND, Richard.]

    Arundel. By the author of the Observer.

    London, Printed for C. Dilly … 1789.

    First edition. Richard Cumberland (1732–1811) was the grandson of the great scholar Richard Bentley, and great-grandson of the Bishop of Peterborough; he had already made his name as a playwright in London, and was also the author of a periodical paper the Observer when he published this,...

    £1500

  14. CURTIUS Rufus, Quintus. 

    De rebus Alexandri Magni, cum commentario perpetuo & indice absolutissimo Samuelis Pitisci, quibus accedunt...

    Utrecht, Franciscus Halma, 1685. 

    First Halma edition of Curtius’s history of Alexander the Great, with a series of accomplished etched illustrations by Jan van den Aveelen. 

    £375

  15. CURTIUS RUFUS, Quintus.

    De rebus gestis Alexandri Magni regis Macedonum opus … Accesserunt enim antehac nunquam visa … Omnia...

    Basel, Hieronymus Froben and Nicolaus Episcopius, March 1545.

    Handsome folio edition of Curtius Rufus’ history of Alexander the Great, edited by the German humanist Christoph Bruno (fl. 1541–1566), with extensive sixteenth-century marginal annotations.

    £2000

  16. [DA PORTO, Luigi.]

    ‘Lettere di Alvigi da Porto vicentino al Savorgnano, al Ghilini, e ad altri intorno ai successi della Guerra...

    [Milan, c. 1800].

    A manuscript of an influential and then-unpublished historical work by the author of the original Romeo and Juliet, copied from a sixteenth-century codex at the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana.

    £950

  17. [DARIEN EXPEDITION].

    A perfect list of the several persons residenters in Scotland, who have subscribed as adventurers in the joynt-stock...

    Glasgow, reprinted by Hutchinson & Brookman, 1827.

    First edition of this reprint of the list, first published in Edinburgh in 1696, of subscribers to William Paterson’s Company of Scotland. Paterson (1658-1719) sat on the first board of the Bank of England, but left following a disagreement with the other board members. Following this he devoted...

    £50

  18. DARRÉ, G.G.

    ‘Conferences diaconales données par Mr l’abbé Darré, Vicaire Général au GrandSéminaire d’Auch. Année...

    Auch, 1864.

    An attractively written manuscript of Abbé Darré’s practical manual for the use of young priests entering pastoral ministry, the text remaining unprinted, according to OCLC, until 1872.

    £200

  19. DAURAY DE BRIE, J.F.

    Théorie des lois sociales.

    Paris, Demonville, An XII (1804).

    First edition of Dauray de Brie’s survey of ‘natural order’. Published in the year of Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor of France, the author’s tendency is anti-revolutionary, rejecting Rousseau’s statement that rule of a minority is against the natural order. Rather Dauray de Brie deplores...

    £300

  20. DAVID, [Pierre Drapeyron de].

    A History of the Campaigns of General Pichegru, containing the Operations of the Armies of the North,...

    London, for G.G.J. & J. Robinson, 1796.

    First edition in English, printed in the same year as the French original, of this account of General Pichegru’s campaigns during the early French Revolutionary Wars.

    £185