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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. ANTONIUS de Vercellis. 

    Sermones quadragesimales de XII mirabilibus Christianae fidei excellentiis [with additions by Ludovicus...

    Venice, Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, [for Alexander Calcedonius], 16 February 1492/93. 

    A remarkable copy of the first edition of Antonius de Vercellis’ sermons, owned and annotated by three contemporary Franciscans, one of whom, Andrea Alamanni, may be the confessor who administered Machiavelli’s last rites. 

    £8500

  2. APULEIUS, Lucius. 

    L. Apuleii Metamorphoseos, sive lusus Asini libri XI.  Floridoru[m] IIII.  De deo Socratis I.  De philosophia...

    Venice, ‘in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri’, May 1521. 

    First Aldine edition of the works of the second-century AD Numidian novelist Apuleius, with the editio princeps of Alcinous’s second-century handbook on Plato’s philosophy in the original Greek, from the library of the great French writer Victor Hugo. 

    £2000

  3. [ARISTOTLE.] 

    Disputations on Aristotle’s Organon. 

    Milan, 1600-1601. 

    An interesting manuscript comprising disputations on the first four works of Aristotle’s Organon, covering logical analysis and dialectic, compiled by a Milanese student at the turn of the seventeenth century. 

    £1250

  4. [ARISTOTLE.]

    ‘Quaestiones philosophicae ad mentem Aristotelis R.P. Iulii Caes. Corradi C.R.S. excepit Abb. Fabritius de Comitibus...

    [Rome, 1670–1].

    A late seventeenth-century manuscript containing lectures on Aristotle’s Physics given at the prestigious Collegio Clementino in Rome by Giulio Cesare Corradi of Cremona, Somascan priest and lecturer in philosophy, as recorded by Fabrizio Guidi di Bagno.

    £850

  5. [ARISTOTLE – ELIAS.]

    Biblioteca Armeno-Georgica. I. Commentarii in Aristotelis Categorias Eliae commentatori adscripti versio...

    St Petersburg, Academiae Imperialis Scientarum, 1911.

    Uncommon edition, published by the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, of the Armenian translation of the commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories by the sixth-century Christian philosopher and commentator Elias.

    £250

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. BACON, Francis.

    Opuscula varia posthuma, philosophica, civilia, et theologica, nunc primum edita. Cura & fide Guilielmi Rawley...

    London, R. Daniel, impensis Octaviani Pulleyn, 1658.

    First edition, second issue of this collection of the philosophical, political, and theological writings of Bacon, including numerous essays previously unpublished, and the first appearance in Latin of a biographical sketch of the philosopher by William Rawley (c. 1588–1667), Bacon’s literary...

    £1250

  9. [BALDELLI, Giovanni Battista].

    Elogio di Niccolò Machiavelli.

    Londra, 1794. 

    Uncommon first edition of this speech in praise of Machiavelli, given to the Reale Accademia Fiorentina on 7 August 1794 by the Florentine soldier, politician, and historian Giovanni Battista Baldelli Boni (1766–1831).

    £325

  10. [BARSANTI, Pier Vincenzo.] 

    Della futura rinnovazione de’ cieli e della terra e de’ suoi abitatori libri tre. 

    [Florence,] Stamperia Bonducciana, 1780. 

    First edition of this utopia by the Tuscan Dominican Pier Vincenzo Barsanti. 

    £675

  11. BEAUMONT, Gustave-Auguste de la Bonninière de.

    Autograph letter signed (‘Gustave de Beaumont’) to Sarah Austin.

    Birmingham, 27 June [1835].

    A warm and personal autograph documenting the relationship between Beaumont (1802–1866), prison reformer and travel companion to Alexis de Tocqueville, and one of the most accomplished contemporary catalysts of philosophical exchange, the translator Sarah Austin.

    £350

  12. [BENDISCIOLI, Faustino.]

    Quadro ossia saggio epilogato del Sistema di liberta’ proclamato dai Francesi.

    Milan, Stamperia [dei Patrioti d’Italia] di Strada Nuova, [1799].

    An impassioned tract attacking the claims of a new life of liberty promoted in Europe after the French Revolution, very rarely to be found in any of the three editions published in the same year.

    £200

  13. [BERINGTON, Simon, adapted by Jean-Baptiste DUPUY-DEMPORTES.] 

    Memoires de Gaudence de Luques, prisonnier de l’Inquisition...

    Amsterdam and Leipzig, Arkstée & Merkus, 1754. 

    Second edition of this much expanded and altered translation of Berington’s celebrated utopian novel, Memoirs of Sigr Gaudentio di Lucca (1737). 

    £500

  14. BERKELEY, George.

    Traktat o nachalakh chelovecheskogo znaniia.

    St Petersburg, O. N. Popov, 1905.

    First Russian edition of George Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge, translated by E. Dobolsky and edited by N.G. Dobolsky. The text, on the chief causes of error and difficulty in the sciences, examining the grounds of scepticism, atheism and irreligion, was first published in Dublin in 1710,...

    £500

  15. BOETHIUS, Severinus.

    Of the Consolation of Philosophy. In five Books. Made English and illustrated with Notes, by the right honourable...

    London, J. D. for Awnsham and John Churchill, and Francis Hildyard, York, 1695.

    First edition of this translation by the diplomat, politician and Jacobite conspirator Richard Graham, first Viscount Preston (1648–1695). The translation had initially been completed in 1680; after the Glorious Revolution, Preston was arrested as a supporter of James II in exile, released,...

    £950

  16. [BOLINGBROKE, Henry St John, Viscount].

    Letters, on the Spirit of Patriotism: on the Idea of a Patriot King: and on the State of...

    London: Printed for A. Millar … 1749.

    First authorised edition. Written in 1738 for the Prince of Wales, the manuscript was then entrusted to Pope who had it printed, to Bolingbroke’s fury: he bought up the entire edition and had it burnt in October 1744 (only two imperfect copies survive, at the British Library and Princeton). He later...

    £375

  17. BONET, Nicolas.

    Habes Nicholai Bonetti viri p[er]spicacissimi quattuor volumina: Metaphysicam videl[icet] naturale[m] phylosophia[m]...

    Venice, Boneto Locatello for the heirs of Ottaviano Scoto, 1505.

    First collected edition of the works of the French Franciscan Friar Nicolas Bonet (c. 1280–1343), owned and annotated by the Italian historian, biographer, and physician Paolo Giovio (1486–1552).

    £4000

  18. BOUDIER DE VILLEMERT, Pierre-Joseph. 

    L’Andrometrie, ou examen philosophique de l’homme.  Par Monsieur l’Abbé de Villemaire. 

    Paris, chez Brunet, 1753. 

    First editions of two scarce works by the philosopher, moralist and Parisian avocat Boudier de Villemert (1716–1801), best known as the author of L’Ami des Femmes. 

    £2500

  19. BRADLAUGH, Charles.

    Catalogue of the library of the late Charles Bradlaugh.

    London, Mrs H. Bradlaugh Bonner, 1891.

    Only edition of this private production, printed by Bradlaugh’s daughter, Hypatia, at the press of her husband, a printer, ‘not merely to publish a descriptive list of the volumes contained in the library in order to facilitate their sale, but to make somewhat of a memento of Mr Bradlaugh himself’...

    £100

  20. BROUGHAM, Lord Henry.

    Lives of men of letters and science who flourished in the time of George III … with portraits, engraved...

    London, Charles Knight and Co., 1845-47.

    First edition of the first volume (1845), later edition of the second volume (dated 1847, first published 1846) of Brougham’s lives which includes Voltaire, Hume, Davy, Johnson, and Adam Smith to name a few stars in the firmament of the reign of George III, or, in Brougham’s terms, the ‘Augustan...

    £125