Advanced search

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.

Sort by
Author
Price
Date
Title

  1. [JUSTICES OF THE PEACE.]

    The Boke of Justices of Peas the Charge with all the Processe of the Cessions, Warrantes Supercedias &...

    [Colophon: London, Richard Pynson], [1505–6?].

    First edition(?), very rare, of the first printed guide for Justices of the Peace, issued with a short guide to land law.

    £27500

  2. [MONTESQUIEU, Charles Louis de Secondat.]

    De l’esprit des loix, ou du rapport que les loix doivent avoir avec la constitution...

    Geneva, Barrillot [sic], [1748].

    First edition, first issue of Montesquieu’s masterpiece of political theory asserting the principle of the separation of a government’s powers as a means to prevent tyranny: a principle which formed the ideological basis of the French and American revolutions and became the cornerstone of the...

    £25750

  3. AUGUSTINUS TRIUMPHUS [i.e. AUGUSTINUS de Ancona].  

    Summa de potestate ecclesiastica.

    Augsburg, [Johann Schüssler,] 6 March 1473.

    First edition of this highly important and influential magnum opus of political theory, a defence of papal supremacy.

    £22500

  4. [HAMILTON, Alexander, James MADISON, and John JAY].

    The Federalist: A Collection of Essays written in Favor of the new Constitution,...

    New York: Printed and sold by John and Andrew M’Lean … 1788.

    First edition in book form of The Federalist Papers, the single most important work of American political philosophy, a normal paper copy, very rare in the original boards, uncut and largely unopened. Volume II is in a mixed state, with the error ‘Letter LXXX’ rather than ‘LXX’...

    £220000

  5. PETTY, William, Sir.

    Another Essay in Political Arithmetick, concerning the Growth of the City of London: with the Measures,...

    1682. London, printed by H.H. for Mark Pardoe, 1683.

    First edition, scarce – seemingly unique in its uncut and unbound state – of Petty’s first work of political arithmetic, a landmark work of statistics, demography, and economics.

    £12000

  6. ALCIONIO, Pietro.

    Petri Alcyonii Medices legatus de exsilio.

    [Venice, in the house of Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano, November 1522.]

    First edition of Alcionio’s dialogue on exile, an intensely annotated copy from a family of French humanists and Reformers. Pietro Alcionio (or Petrus Alcyonius, fl. 1487–1527) was a Venetian humanist, scholar and Aristotelian translator who began his career as a proofreader for Aldus Manutius....

    £5750

  7. FULBECKE, William.

    An Historicall Collection of the continuall Factions, Tumults, and Massacres of the Romans and Italians during...

    London, Printed for William Ponsonby. 1601.

    First edition of Fulbecke’s Historicall Collection, a ‘narrative history of the last years of the Roman republic’ (ODNB), one of very few such works by a Renaissance English writer, featuring much material on the rebellion of the nobleman Catiline, undoubtedly included as a reference...

    £5250

  8. MALTHUS, T. R.

    Principles of political Economy considered with a View to their practical Application.

    London, John Murray, 1820.

    First edition of Malthus’s broadest treatment of issues in political economy, an attractive copy from the library of the economist and industrialist Robert Hyde Greg, a critic of Malthus’s.

    £5000

  9. [CATHERINE the Great of Russia]. BETSKOY, [Ivan]; [Nicolas-Gabriel LE] CLERC, translator; [Denis DIDEROT, contributor].

    Les plans et les statuts, des différents établissements ordonnés par sa majesté impériale Catherine II. pour l’éducation de la jeunesse, et l’utilité générale...

    Amsterdam, Marc-Michel Rey, 1775.

    First edition in French, translated from the Russian originals of 1764–7, of Catherine the Great’s plans for the Enlightened reform of education in her empire. The large engraved plans, the tables and the allegorical vignettes strike a compelling balance between a utopian and a practical vision...

    £4000

  10. ALBERTI, Leon Battista.

    El Momo. La moral e muy graciosa historia del Momo; compuesta en Latin por el docto varon Leon Bapista...

    Alcalá de Henares, Joan Mey Flandro, 1553.

    First edition in Spanish of Alberti’s Momus [or De principe], translated by Augustín de Almaçan and with an introductory 8-page Exposición by the Toledo ascetic writer and scholar Alejo Venegas (1495?–1554?).

    £3800

  11. BACON, Francis.

    Francisci Baconi, Baronis de Verulamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani, operum moralium et civilium tomus … cura...

    London, Edward Griffin [and John Haviland] for Richard Whitaker [and John Norton], 1638.

    First edition, first issue, a copy from the celebrated Albani library: tangible witness to the early and fecund reception of Bacon’s thought in the circles of Galilean science in Italy.

    £3500

  12. GIZZI [or GITTIO], Andrea Giuseppe.

    Lo scettro del despota, overo del titolo, e dignità dispotale, discorso istorico,...

    Naples, G. Raillard, 1697.

    Only edition of this extraordinary and rare study of legal, ceremonial, and political roles of the despot, or despotes, a class of prince akin to a king and beneath an emperor in the power structures of both the Byzantine world and Renaissance Italy, and thus a title used both in Venice and...

    £2500

  13. [PADUA.] 

    Statuta Patavina noviter impressa cum diligenti cura et castigatione et cum additionibus necessariis tam provisionum...

    Venice, Girolamo Giberti, 25 January 1528. 

    An attractive volume of statutes relating to the city of Padua in northern Italy, edited by the legal scholar Bartolomeo Abborario, with detailed annotations by a practicing local lawyer. 

    £2500

  14. STAUNFORD [Stanford], William, Sir.

    Les Plees del Coron, Divisees in Plusors Titles & Comon Lieux. Per Queux Home Pluis Redement...

    [London], Richard Tottell, 1583.

    The definitive edition, and that owned by Thomas Jefferson, of the first book devoted entirely to criminal law. First published posthumously in 1557 and based on Bracton and the Year Books, Les Plees deals in turn with offences, jurisdiction, appeals, indictments and defences. The third...

    £2500

  15. ANDERSEN, Hendrik Christian.

    Création d’un centre mondial de communication.

    Paris, 1913.

    First French editions of both parts of this ambitious urban planning project envisioning a utopian world capital, in which art and architecture would function as vehicles of world peace.

    £2250

  16. MALTHUS, T. R.

    An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a View of its past and present Effects on human Happiness; with an...

    London, John Murray, 1817.

    Fifth edition, ‘with important additions’, of one of the most influential works in the history of economic thought, a handsome copy owned and possibly annotated by the economist and industrialist Robert Hyde Greg, a critic of Malthus’s.

    £2200

  17. PURSEY, Thomas.

    The last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.

    [Edinburgh, T. Pursey, 1900.]

    A photographic tour-de-force, assembling many hundreds of individual photographic portraits neatly incorporated into a painted scenario, and then reproduced as a photogravure, depicting all the attendees of the last General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, held in May 1900. Evidently a...

    £2000

  18. LEWIS, Wyndham. 

    Doom of Youth …

    London, Chatto & Windus, 1932. 

    First English edition, one of Lewis’s scarcest works (only 549 copies avoided destruction).  Doom of Youth began life as a series of seven articles on youth politics in Time and Tide in June–July 1931, rounded off with a pair by G.K. Chesterton; it was expanded and first published...

    £2000

  19. ASCHAM, Roger.

    A Report and Discourse … of the Affaires and State of Germany and the Emperour Charles his Court, during certaine...

    London, Printed by John Daye … [1570?].

    First edition. Ascham’s account of his time in Germany as secretary to Sir Richard Morison, ambassador to the court of Emperor Charles V, takes the form of a letter to the courtier John Astley.

    £2000

  20. [CHARLES II.]

    RIVET, Jean. ‘Le favory du Ciel ou Meditation sur le pseaume cent un par Jean Rivet laisné Sainctongeois’.

    [Caussade en Quercy, 1664.]

    A fascinating manuscript meditation on Psalm 101, a text traditionally used as an exposition on princely authority in Protestant theology, with a long dedication ‘A Tres Puissant et Serenissime Roy Charle deuxiesme Roy de la grande Bretagne’.

    £1850