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. PASCOLI, Alessandro. 

    Nuovo metodo per introdursi ad imitazion de’ geometri con ordine, chiarezza, e brevità nelle piu sottili...

    Venice, Andrea Poletti, 1721. 

    Scarce second edition (first 1702) of this work of philosophy and medicine by the Perugian scholar Pascoli (1669–1757). 

    £450

  2. [PASCOLI, Livio.] ‘Vilio LOCASPI’.

    Del modo di mantenere abolita la mendicità, discorso familiare.

    Verona, Mainardi, 1817.

    Only edition, very rare, of this proposal for the abolition of begging, and of poverty more broadly, by the poet and essayist Livio Pascoli.

    £285

  3. [PHILOSOPHY. 

    Philosophy course on logic.  Brussels, early eighteenth century?] 

    [Brussels, early eighteenth century?] 

    An elegant manuscript philosophy course on logic, likely produced at a Jesuit college, where logic was one of the three philosophy courses taught along with natural philosophy and metaphysics.

    £375

  4. PLATO; [Marsilio FICINO].

    Platonis opera.

    [(Colophon:) Venice, Filippo Pinzi, 22 April 1517.]

    Third edition of Marsilio Ficino’s important and influential Latin translations of and commentaries on Plato’s works, with numerous early annotations.

    £5000

  5. POPPER, Karl.

    A substantial archive of books and associated working papers from one of the most important philosophers of modernity;...

    London et al., 1960s–1970s.

    An extremely important archive witnessing the development of Karl Popper’s thought and showcasing his writing process, from the library of his former research assistant, Dr Ivan Slade.

    £175000

  6. PORTER, [Jane].

    Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney; with Remarks, by Miss Porter …

    London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807.

    First edition, uncommon, of a collection of aphorisms and observations drawn from Sidney’s prose works, edited and with additional commentary by the novelist Jane Porter (1775–1850).

    £600

  7. RICARDO, David.

    Zasady ekonomji politycznej i podatkowania.

    Warsaw, Jan Cotty, 1919.

    Second and most complete Polish edition of On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (first published in 1817), in a new translation by Dr. M. Bronstein. The 1826 first Polish translation by Stanislaw Kunatt was based on the translation into French by the Portuguese journalist Francisco Solano...

    £150

  8. RIDOLFI, Luca Antonio. 

    Aretefila, dialogo, nel quale da una parte sono quelle ragioni allegate, le quali affermano, lo amore...

    Lyons, Guillaume Rouillé, 1562. 

    The third edition (first 1557) of a remarkable Renaissance philosophical dialogue on the nature of love which marked the culmination of the divisive questione d’amore hotly debated in sixteenth-century literature, our copy extensively annotated by a seventeenth-century collector of musical...

    £2800

  9. 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

  10. ROUSSEAU, Jean Jacques.

    [half-title: Oeuvres de J. J. Rousseau. Tome neuvieme. Contenant les …] Lettres écrites de...

    Amsterdam, Rey, 1764.

    Rare. The ninth volume of the first collected edition of Rousseau’s works to be published by Rey (1762–1764), and printed the same year as the first edition, using a reprinted title-page conjugate with the half-title present here, and without the errata leaf.

    £1150

  11. RUFIANDER, Fabius Jocosus, pseud. [Friedrich Julius ROTTMANN]. 

    Curiöse Inaugural Disputation von dem Recht / Natur /...

    ‘Teutschland, Gedruckt in denen Hundes-Tagen, 1716.’ 

    First edition, very rare, of this satirical academic disputation on melancholy, dedicated to the author’s ‘unpleasant and universally despised’ peers in the hope of cheering them up (p. [4] trans.). 

    £675

  12. RUGE, Arnold, and Clair James GRECE, Paul NERRLICH (ed.).

    Unser System ... Herausgegeben von C. J. Grece, LL.D. Zum 100. Geburtstage...

    Frankfurt, Neuer Frankfurter Verlag, 1903.

    A rare celebrative reprint of the most detailed exposition of Arnold Ruge’s philosophy (originally published in 1850).

    £100

  13. [RUSSELL, William].

    The History of modern Europe. With an Account of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and a View of the...

    London, Robinson, Robson, Walter, and Sewell, 1779. 

    Extremely rare first appearance of an ‘Enlightened history’. This first edition was published in the same year as a Dublin imprint. Two further volumes were issued in 1784, and the whole work issued as a five-volume set in 1786. 

    £1950

  14. SENECA the Younger, and SENECA the Rhetorician.

    L. Annaei Senecae philosophi opera omnia; ex ult. I. Lipsii emendatio: et M. Annaei...

    Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, [1639–]1640.
    [With:] 
    GRONOVIUS, Joannes Fredericus. Ad L. & M. Annaeos Senecas notae....

    First Elzevir edition of the moral works and letters of the philosopher and playwright Lucius Annaeus Seneca, and the surviving Suasoriae and Controversiae of his father, known as Seneca the Rhetorician, along with the Amsterdam reprint of the extensive scholia of Johann Friedrich...

    £500

  15. S[HEAFE], T[homas].

    Vindiciae senectutis, or, a Plea for Old-Age: which is senis cujusdam cygnea cantio. And the several Points...

    London, George Mither and are to be sold by Joshua Kirton, and Thomas Warren, 1639.

    First edition of a rare encomium on senectitude by the eighty-year-old canon of Windsor, Thomas Sheafe, who died later in 1639, dedicated to the supremely long-lived divine Laurence Chaderton (1536?–1640), first Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. This is the rarer second issue, with a cancel...

    £1250

  16. SPINOZA, Baruch.

    A Treatise partly theological, and partly political, containing some few Discourses, to prove that the Liberty...

    London, s.n., 1689.

    First English edition of one of the most important works in the history of modern thought.

    £28000

  17. STEWART, Dugald.

    Esquisses de philosophie morale …

    Paris, A. Johanneau, 1826.

    First edition in French of Stewart’s Outlines of Moral Philosophy (1793), translated from the fourth English edition of 1818, with a 152-page prefatory essay by the translator, Théodore-Simon Jouffroy.

    £100

  18. [SWEDIAUER, Franz Xavier].

    The Philosophical dictionary: or the opinions of modern philosophers on metaphysical, moral and political...

    London, for G.G.J. and J Robinson, 1786.

    First edition of this philosophical dictionary, featuring extracts from ‘the writings of the most eminent philosophers in Europe’ (preface) chosen by Swediaur, who originally compiled the collection as a sort of commonplace book for his private use. The broad-reaching content includes contributions...

    £200

  19. [TACOLI, Carlotta Munarini, Marchioness.]

    ‘Memorie riguardanti la storia filosofica per istruzione elementare d’una...

    Modena, 1805.

    An unpublished manuscript introduction to ancient philosophy compiled by Marchioness Carlotta Munarini Tacoli for the education of her precocious eight-year-old-daughter, the future entomologist Adelaide Tacoli Bellincini Bagnesi (see below).

    £1250

  20. THOMAS AQUINAS; Antonius PIZAMANUS, editor.

    Opuscula [with a life of St Thomas].

    Venice, Hermannus Liechtenstein, 7 September 1490.

    First collected edition of seventy-one shorter works by Thomas Aquinas.

    £3750