[QUESNAY, François].

DU PONT DE NEMOURS, Pierre Samuel, editor. Physiocratie, ou constitution naturelle du gouvernement le plus...

First edition of the ‘Bible’ of the Physiocrats and one of the most important and original works on political economy to be published before the Wealth of Nations. The excessively rare ‘Pékin’ imprint was printed in very small numbers and swiftly withdrawn because of a statement on page 104...

£37500

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

ROUQUET, Jean-André. 

The present State of the Arts in England.  By M. Rouquet, member of the Royal Academy of Painting and...

London, for J. Nourse, 1755. 

First edition in English, published in the same year as the French original, from the library of the great Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790). 

£19500

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

PONTANO, Giovanni.

De rebus coelestibus.

Naples, ‘ex officina Sigismundi Mayr Germani : summo ingenio artificis Ioannetto Salodio : Antonio Vuerengrundt : Evangelista Papiensi :...

First editions of three works on cosmology, ethics, and astrology by the Neapolitan humanist, poet, and polymath Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), an important sammelband from the celebrated library of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), professor of natural philosophy and natural history at the University...

£11000

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

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

[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

SAY, Jean-Baptiste.

Olbie, ou Essai sur les moyens de réformer les moeurs d’une nation.

Paris, Deterville and Treuttel & Wurtz, ‘an VIII de la République’ [1799–1800].[bound with:][ANON]. Principes politiques, par F. M....

Presentation copy with the author’s inscription of the rare first edition of Say’s utopia, written in response to a competition organised by the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques on the question: ‘Quelles sont les institutions capables de fonder la morale chez un peuple?’. Say...

£5000

SENECA, Lucius Annaeus.

L. Annei Senecae opera, et ad dicendi facultatem, et ad bene vivendu[m] utilissima, per Des. Erasmum Roterod....

Basel, ‘in officina Frobeniana’, 1529 [(colophon:) Basel, Johann Herwagen, March 1537].

Second Erasmus edition of the moral essays and letters of Seneca, owned and annotated by Ludovicus Carinus (d. 1569), friend and later foe of Erasmus himself.

£5000

STEUART, Sir James Denham.

The works, political, metaphisical, and chronological... now first collected by General Sir James Steuart,...

London, T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1805.

First and only edition of Steuart’s collected works, volumes I to IV containing the Inquiry into the principles of political Oeconomy, volume V containing Steuart’s various writings on money and coinage, volume VI his philosophical writings, together with anecdotes of his life.

£4750

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

LEGGE, James. 

The Chinese Classics: with a translation, critical and exegetical notes, prolegomena, and copious indexes … In...

Hong Kong, at the author’s; London, Trübner & Co., 1861 [– 1865]. 

First editions of the first four volumes of Legge’s monumental Chinese Classics, with parallel Chinese and English texts, detailed introductions, notes, and indexes. 

£3750

[HARRINGTON, James.]

The commonwealth of Oceana.

London, printed for J. Streater, 1656.

First edition, first issue. ‘Oceana presents Harrington’s vision of the ideal state: an aristocracy of limited, balanced powers. Harrington believed that democracy is most stable where a strong middle class exists and that revolution is a consequence of the separation of economic and political power....

£3750

[SMITH, Adam.] [STEWART, Dugald.]

Account of the life and writings of Adam Smith, LL.D. From the Transactions of the Royal Society...

[Edinburgh? N.p. 1794?].

First separate edition of the first ‘Life’ of Adam Smith, and one of only a handful of copies that were printed for limited private issue. A year later, it was incorporated into the Essays on Philosophical Subjects, and later in editions of the Wealth of Nations. Stewart (1753-1828) read the paper...

£3750

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

NEWTON, Isaac.

Opuscula Mathematica, philosophica et philologica. Collegit partimque Latine vertit ac recensuit Joh. Castillioneus...

Lausanne and Geneva, Bousquet & soc., 1744.

First edition of Newton’s collected works, a major tool in the dissemination of Newton’s science and a major publication in the history of science.  The edition, edited and introduced by the Pisa alumnus Giovanni Salvemini da Castiglione, contains twenty-six works (which, while having appeared...

£3500

POSTEL, Guillaume. 

De originibus, seu, de varia et potissimum orbi Latino ad hanc diem incognita, aut inconsyderata historia,...

Basel, Johannes Oporinus, [1553].

First edition of Postel’s investigations into the original language as a means to regain the primordial unity of mankind. 

£3500

MILL, John Stuart.

The Subjection of Women.

London: Longmans, Green, 1869.

First edition of ‘the last of [Mill’s] great political tracts’ (ODNB), one of the most important and controversial treatments of women’s rights in the nineteenth century. Mill was heavily involved in the women’s suffragette movement, and in this work he argued ‘that the principle which...

£3400

[CATHERINE II, Empress of Russia].

Le Czarewitz Chlore. Conte Moral. De main impériale & de maitresse.

Berlin, Fréderic Nicolaï, Lausanne, François Grasset, 1782.

First edition, very rare, of a speculum principis of the Enlightenment, by one of the time’s most enlightened monarchs. Le Czarewitz Chlore is a moral tale written by Catherine II of Russia for her two grandsons, the future Alexander I and his younger brother Constantine, while their father and mother,...

£3000