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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[DEFOE, Daniel, attributed author].
A golden mine of treasure open’d for the Dutch. By a lover of Britain.
London, [n.p.], 1718.
First edition. ‘Ostensibly by two authors: p.1-32 by a foreigner, presumably a Swede; the “Application” which follows by an Englishman. Probably, not certainly, by Defoe’ (Moore, J.R. A checklist of the writings of Daniel Defoe). While Moore, in his Second Supplement, modified his statement to...
£125
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DE LUCA, Giovanni Battista.
Il Cardinale della S.R. Chiesa pratico di Gio. Battista de Luca nell’ozio Tusculano della Primavera...
Rome, nella stamperia della Reverenda Camera Apostolica, 1680.
Scarce first edition of this thorough work on the cardinalate by the Italian jurist and cardinal De Luca (1614–1683). De Luca studied and practiced law at Naples before moving to Rome in 1645, where he established his reputation as one of Italy’s pre-eminent jurists and worked closely with...
£300
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DEPARCIEUX, Antoine.
Essai sur les probabilités de la durée de la vie humaine; d’où l’on déduit la manière de déterminer...
Paris, chez les frères Guerin, 1746.
A large, crisp and illustrious copy of the first edition of a classic of statistical science: it is the first to define expectation of life – which Deparcieux calls ‘la vie moyenne’ – and the first to contain life tables for men and women.
£3000
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DESCARTES, René, and Louis de la FORGE (editor).
Tractatus de homine, et de formatione foetus.
Amsterdam, Daniel Elzevir, 1677.
First and only Elzevir edition, and the first edition of the better Latin text of Descartes’s Traité de l’homme. De homine ‘is the first work in the history of science and medicine to construct a unified system of human physiology that presents man as a purely material and...
£1100
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DESLANDES, André-François Boureau.
Dying Merrily: or, historical and critical Reflexions on the Conduct of great Men in all Ages,...
London: Printed for M. Cooper ... 1745.
First edition of this translation of Réfléxions sur les grands hommes que sont morts en plaisantant (1712), by the philosopher and naval official André-François Deslandes (1670–1757), an important precursor of the Encyclopédistes.
£450
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DE VITI DE MARCO, Antonio.
Principii di economia finanziaria.
Turin, Giulio Einaudi, 1939.
Revised and definitive edition. The economist and politician Antonio De Viti de Marco (1858–1943) was Professor of Political Economy and Public Finance at the Universities of Camerino, Macerata, Piava, and Rome. He ‘was not a prolific writer – he spent much time patiently revising his own works –...
£150
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DIKREITER, Otto, and Renée SINTENIS (illustrator).
Du und Dein Pferd: Ein anmutiges, belehrendes, und ergötzliches...
Berlin, Königsberg, & Leipzig, Kanter Verlag, [c. 1938].
First edition (seventh to tenth thousand) of a charmingly illustrated work. The collection of short pieces of poetry and prose relating to horses, gathered from sources ranging from Shakespeare and Goethe to Xenophon and the Koran, is illustrated by the German artist Renée Sintenis (1888–1965),...
£80
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DILWORTH, W. H.
The History of the Conquest of Mexico, by the celebrated Hernan Cortes. Containing a faithful and entertaining...
London: Printed for William Anderson … 1759.
First edition, very scarce, of a history of the conquistadores for young readers, loosely derived from Antonio Solís de Ribadeneyra’s Historia de la Conquista de México.
£1850
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DIODORUS Siculus.
Bibliothecae historicae libri XV. Hoc est, quotquot Graece extant de quadraginta quorum quinque nunc primum Latine...
Basel, Heinrich Petri, August 1559.
Important edition, the first to be overseen by Sébastien Castellion, of Diodorus’s influential ‘Historical library’.
£2500
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DIOGENES LAERTIUS, [and Henri ESTIENNE (editor)].
Περι βίων, δογμάτων και αποφθεγμων...
[Geneva,] Henri Estienne, 1570.
First Estienne edition of The Lives of the Philosophers, a very important edition in the original Greek, ‘in which appear for the first time many passages discovered in manuscripts by Estienne’. ‘The volume also contains thirty-six pages of important textual annotations by Henri Estienne,...
£1400
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DISRAELI, Benjamin.
Autograph envelope signed.
[Probably London, c. 1874–1880.]
An envelope probably dating from Disraeli’s second premiership (1874–1880). Lady Emily Peel (1836–1924) was the seventh daughter of the eighth marquess of Tweeddale. Lady Emily Hay, as she then was, married the politician Sir Robert Peel, third baronet, on 13 January 1856, but she left her husband...
£100
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DOBB, Maurice.
On economic theory and socialism. Collected papers.
London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956.
First edition, second impression. This work includes Dobb’s critique of ‘market socialism’ as developed by Oscar Lange and Abba Lerner, which first appeared in the Economic Journal, (1933).
£20
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[DOBB, Maurice.] FEINSTEIN, C. H., editor.
Socialism, Capitalism and Economic Growth. Essays presented to Maurice Dobb.
Cambridge, University Press, 1967.
First edition. A Festschrift for Maurice Dobb with contributions from Joan Robinson, Michael Kalecki, Jan Tinbergen, Robert Solow, etc. It is valuable too, for the comprehensive bibliography of Dobb’s writings.
£60
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[DODSLEY, Robert, et al.]
The Oeconomy of Human Life, in two parts, translated from an Indian manuscript, written by a...
Newport, J. Mallett, 1783.
Rare printing, undertaken in Newport on the Isle of Wight by James Mallett. Only nine publications are listed in ESTC as Mallett, Newport: mostly occasional endeavours, undertaken in 1767, 1770, 1782, 1783 (two publications, including ours), 1784 and 1789 (three publications), and almost all...
£450
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DOLCE, Lodovico.
Somma della filosofia a’Aristotele, e prima della dialettica. [with:] Somma di tutta la natural filosofia di...
Venice, Giovanni Battista, & Marchio Sessa, & fratelli, [1565].
First edition of this exposition of Aristotle’s dialaectics, moral, and natural philosophy by ‘one of the major transmitters of culture in cinquecento Italy’ (Ronnie H. Terpening, Lodovico Dolce: Renaissance Man of Letters, 1997).
£5500
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[DOMINICAN NUNS.]
Regola e costituzioni delle suore di S. Domenico riviste e ristampate d’ordine del rmo p. vicario generale...
Rome, Bernardo Morini, 1853.
Very rare first edition thus of the regulations governing Dominican nuns, published by order of Alexandre Vincent Jandel (1810–1872), who served as Master of the Order of Preachers from 1850 until his death.
£250
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DONNE, John.
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and severall Steps in my Sicknes ...
London, Printed for Thomas Jones … 1627.
Third (and last lifetime) edition of Donne’s most familiar prose work, composed during his convalescence in 1623–4 from the ‘spotted Feaver’ which nearly killed him. It consists of twenty-three ‘Stationes, sive Periodi in Morbo’, each comprising a meditation, expostulation, and prayer.
£13500
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DOUBLEDAY, Thomas.
The Touchstone: a series of letters on social, literary, and political subjects. Originally published in the...
Newcastle, R. Todd, 1863.
First edition. Thomas Doubleday (1790–1870), the son of a Newcastle soap manufacturer, ‘was a radical of Cobbett’s stamp [and] of great influence during the agitation for the Reform Act of 1832’ (Palgrave I, 634). He had also indirectly attacked Malthus in The True Law of Population shewn to...
£250
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[DRESS – SUMPTUARY LAW.]
Ordonnance du Roy pour le reglement & reformation de la dissolution & superfluité qui est és habillemens,...
Paris, Federic Morel, 1583.
A rare example of one of the early attempts by the French authorities at sumptuary law relating to clothing, prohibiting the wearing of certain types of adornment and dress by the vast majority of the population. Similar prohibitions had been made by Henri III’s predecessors, and one of his...
£350
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DUBOIS-AYMÉ [Jean Marie Joseph Aimé DUBOIS, known as].
Examen de quelques questions d’économie politique, et notamment de...
Paris, Pelicier, 1823.
First edition. Dubois-Aymé uses mathematical methodology to examine two of the cases he considers. In the first instance he ‘compares the power due to the riches of two countries. This power he maintains is in proportion to the goods available to each country over and above its indispensable requirements...
£250