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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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
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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
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DUNS SCOTUS, John.
Questiones quodlibetales ex quattuor Sententiarum voluminibus … nunc prime revise … a … Antonio de Fantis.
Pavia, Giacomo Pocatela, 1517.
Uncommon Pavia-printed edition of Duns Scotus’s Quaestiones on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, edited by the Padua-based theologian Antonio de Fantis and first published two years earlier.
£2500
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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
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[EDUCATION.]
Lois et réglemens pour les lycees.
Paris, ‘de l’imprimerie de la République, an XII,’ 1803.
Rare first edition of this extremely interesting collection of laws and regulations governing secondary education in France, reflecting the historic changes enacted between 1801 and 1803 by Napoleon as First Consul, in particular the establishment of lycées.
£175
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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
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[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
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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
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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
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[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
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ENDERS, Elizabeth Crump.
Swinging Lanterns.
New York and London, D. Appleton and Co., 1923.
First edition of this celebrated Chinese travel memoir by Elizabeth Crump Enders, a vivid depiction of China in the 1920s formerly in the possession of Josephine del Drago, American heiress and Chinese art collector.
£100
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[ENGELBRECHT, Martin.]
[Vier Jahreszeiten. Serie 89.]
[Augsburg, Martin Engelbrecht, c. 1750.]
An attractive hand-coloured engraved peepshow showing the four seasons, with summer in the foreground retreating into winter behind, lined with printed waste from an illustrated Dutch religious broadside.
£1750
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ENGELS, Frederich, and Georgi Plekhanov, translator.
Людвигъ Фейербахъ. Сочиненiе Фр. Энгельса....
Geneva, “Sotsial’-demokrata”, 1892.
First Russian edition, rare. Engels and Marx’s analysis of Feuerbach’s philosophy, which played such a vital role in the development of the Marxist legacy, translated by Georgi Plekhanov in the years leading up to the first Russian revolution.
£100
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[ENGLAND, PARLIAMENT.]
An ordinance of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament. For the speedy raising and levying of moneyes,...
London, for John Wright, 27 July 1643.
The ordinance which introduced Excise into England. ‘Excise’ is defined in the OED as follows: ‘A duty charged on home goods, either in the process of their manufacture or before their sale to the home consumers … In England this kind of taxation was first adopted in 1643, in acknowledged imitation...
£275
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EPICTETUS.
To tou Epiktetou encheiridion. Ex editione Joannis Upton accurate expressum.
Glasgow, Foulis, 1751.
The first miniature Foulis edition of Epictetus in Greek, and the first Foulis Epictetus in Greek only; it had been preceded by a larger format, duodecimo (1748) edition in Greek and Latin. A 1765 reissue was, according to ESTC, reset.
£900
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ERASMUS, Desiderius.
Paraclesis, id est adhortio ad sanctissimum ac saluberrimum Cristianae philosophiae studium …
Basel, Johann Froben, February 1520.
Attractive contemporary Erasmus sammelband, superbly eloquent in its physical union of three treatises without which the humanist’s Praise of Folly would risk gross misinterpretation.
£5500
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ERLENBACH, Jean Jacques.
Compliment de Congé en rimes francaises, a monsieur Ziegert, sur son depart pour Halle à l’université...
Breslau, Charles Guillaume Grass, [1754].
Charming and apparently unrecorded poem written on the occasion of the departure for the University of Halle of an unidentified Mr Ziegert by his disgruntled friend Johan Jakob Erlenbach (who, according to a footnote, did not expect his poem to be printed).
£150
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ESCHER, Franklin.
Practical Investing.
New York, The Bankers Publishing Co., 1914.
First edition. In the words of a contemporary reviewer, this book “is most serviceable and has the lasting virtue of dealing with a technical subject in a readable manner” (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, p. 245). Concise and accessible, this early work of investment...
£100
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[FACCHINEI, Ferdinando.]
Note ed osservazioni sul libro intitolato Dei delitti e delle pene.
[Venice, Zatta,] 1765.
First edition of this influential Enlightenment work with profound philosophical, political, and economic implications, containing in a single page both one of the earliest instances of the term ‘socialist’ in print and an early reference to the concept of the ‘invisible hand’, pitched one...
£5500
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[FASCISM.]
Ordinamento Corporativo dello Stato Fascista.
Padua, Edizione di propaganda corporative, 1935.
Italian Fascism primarily followed the economic model of corporatism to organise capital and labour interest groups into trade unions and employer associations such as agriculture, industry, commercial trade, professionals and artists, as well as banks and credit associations. These trade associations...
£2500