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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. 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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. [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

  5. [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

  6. DOLCE, Lodovico.

    Somma della filosofia d’Aristotele, e prima della dialettica.

    Venice, Giovanni Battista, & Marchio Sessa, & fratelli, [1565].

    First edition of this exposition of Aristotle’s dialectics, moral, and natural philosophy by one of the most significant poligrafi and artistic theorists of the cinquecento, intended for a non-specialist readership.

    £2500

  7. [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

  8. 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

  9. 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

  10. [DRESS HABITS.]

    Considerazioni d’una dama ad una sua amica intorno al vestiario odierno.

    [S.l.,] Impresso dal Curti del fu Giacomo, 1810.

    Extremely rare set of six pious reflections on modern dress habits, ostensibly written by an anonymous lady to her friend.

    £350

  11. [DRYDEN, John.]

    The Medall. A Satyre against Sedition. By the Authour of Absalom and Achitophel …

    London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1682.

    First edition, second issue, adding two Latin lines at the end. The subject of Dryden’s satire was the medal struck to celebrate Shaftesbury’s acquittal from charges of high treason. According to Spence, Charles II gave Dryden ‘the hint for writing his poem’, and rewarded him for it. In...

    £750

  12. 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

  13. DUHAMEL du Monceau, Henri-Louis, [and John MILLS (translator)].

    A practical Treatise of Husbandry, wherein are contained,...

    London, J. Whiston & B. White, R. Baldwin, W. Johnston, and P. Davey & B. Law, 1759.

    First English edition, edited and expanded by John Mills – his first agricultural publication. Among the most prolific and respected agricultural authors of the second half of the eighteenth century, John Mills (c. 1717–1786) is first recorded in 1743 in Paris, working on a French edition...

    £650

  14. DUNOYER, Charles-Bathélemy.

    L’industrie et la morale considérées dans leurs rapports avec la liberté.

    Paris, A. Sautelet, 1825.

    First edition of this defence of the old economic liberalism against the new democracy by the French economist and politician Dunoyer (1786-1863). ‘In anticipation of Spencer, Dunoyer here developed the idea that society was an organism, in which it fell to the lot of a congeries of institutions and...

    £150

  15. ÉCOLE DE MEDECINE DE MONTPELLIER.

    A collection of eighty-seven doctoral dissertations presented to and defended at the Medical...

    Montpellier, various publishers, 1800–1810.

    An extraordinary collection, bound up very soon after the last was published, of eighty-seven doctoral dissertations presented to the ancient medical school at Montpellier in the first decade of the nineteenth century.

    £1750

  16. ELISABETH, Empress of Austria.

    A collection of six manuscript scores from the library of Elisabeth (‘Sisi’), Empress...

    1850–60s.

    Elizabeth Amalie Eugenie of Bavaria (1837–1898), or ‘Sisi’, married Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria at the age of 16, on 24 April 1854. Her first child, a daughter, was born 11 months later but died as an infant (see below), and a male heir had to wait until the birth of Crown Prince Rudolf...

    £3750

  17. [ELIZABETH II.] KEYSTONE (PARIS).

    La Princesse Elisabeth fille du Duc d’York, et héritier, du trône d’Angleterre …

    1936.

    Princess Elizabeth on the day of the announcement of the abdication of Edward VII.

    £1200

  18. ELLIS, Charles Thomas.

    Practical Remarks and Precedents of Proceedings in Parliament; comprising the Standing Orders of both Houses,...

    London, Brooke and Rider et al., 1802.

    First edition of the earliest comprehensive treatment of the important subject of private bill legislation, being a greatly revised and enlarged version of the author’s Solicitor’s Instructor in Parliament concerning Estate and Inclosure Bills (1799). Further, updated editions and supplements were...

    £550

  19. ELLIS, William.

    A Compleat System of Experienced Improvements Made on Sheep, Grass-Lambs and House-Lambs…

    London, printed for T. Astley, 1749.

    First edition, scarce in commerce, of an innovative manual of sheep farming and husbandry.

    £475

  20. [EMBOSSED BINDING.] DE LA RUE, Thomas (binder). SHERIDAN, Louisa Henrietta.

    The Comic Offering; or Ladies’ Melange of...

    London, Smith, Elder, and Co., 1832.

    An appropriately light-hearted embossed binding, on the second outing of this compendium of humorous stories, verses and vignettes to amuse the highly refined young ladies of the early nineteenth century. The publisher’s advertisements mention other works that are in ‘elegantly embossed’...

    £300