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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FIELDING, Henry.
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling …
Paris: Printed by Fr. Amb. Didot the eldest, and sold by J. N. Pissot, and Barrois Junior … Booksellers. 1780.
The first French edition in English of Fielding’s masterpiece, only the second English edition to be printed abroad (after Dresden, 1774). Here the text benefits from critical attention by Didot, who collated Murphy’s edition of Fielding’s Works with the last separate English edition.
£425
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[FISCHER, Friedrich Christoph Jonathan, and Pierre-Gustave BRUNET (translator)].
Les nuits d’érpeuve des villageoises...
Paris, Jules Gay, 1861.
First edition in French, numbered 26 of 100 copies, of this obscure study, first published in 1780 as Über die Probenächte der teutschen Bauernmädchen (‘On the Rehearsal Nights of Teutonic Peasant Women’). Brunet’s ‘postface’ builds on the comparisons made in Fischer’s original...
£150
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GAYOT DE PITAVAL (Conseil).
Question d’estat: fille reclamée par deux meres.
Paris, Nicolas le Gras, 1716.
First edition of this account by the famous advocate François Gayot de Pitaval (1673–1743) of a 1709 case, where a midwife had substituted a new-born girl who was then claimed both by the real mother and the woman to whom the baby had been given. Pitaval’s account details the principles by...
£350
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GIOJA, Melchiorre.
Del merito e delle ricompense, trattato storico e filosofico ...
Filadelfia, [n. p.], 1830 (vol. I); Lugano, Giuseppe Ruggia, 1830 (vol. II).
Second edition (first published in 1818, a third followed in 1832) of this important work by the political theorist, economist, and champion of Italian unity, Gioja (1767–1829). ‘He contended in his best known work, Del merito e delle ricompense ..., which was inspired by Beccaria’s Dei delitti...
£250
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GOSSELIN, Charles-Robert.
Plan d’éducation, en réponse aux académies de Marseille et de Châlons, dont l’une a proposé...
Amsterdam, 1785.
A most interesting sammelband of three rare French works on education from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, promoting, inter alia, the appointment of more women teachers, better education for girls, and the use of visual aids in teaching mathematics.
£875
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[GOURAUD, Stéphane, known as:] GURO, Stepan Andreevich, chevalier de.
Rech’ o deistvii prosveshcheniia na sostoianie...
St Petersburg, Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1826.
First edition of an early speech on the importance of higher education, delivered by the rector of the recently founded University of St Petersburg in his native French (and in a somewhat florid style, to judge from the Russian translation by Nikita Butyrsky, a fellow academic and translator of...
£400
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GREGORY, John.
A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters … the second Edition.
London, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, and Edinburgh, W. Creech, 1774.
‘Second edition’ of Gregory’s Legacy to his Daughters, published immediately after the first, written following the death of the author’s wife in 1761 and designed to provide posthumous guidance for his two daughters, whom he brought up ‘in a philosophical simplicity’ (ODNB)...
£275
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GROSSI, Vincenzo.
Fra i pelli-rosse d’America: curiosità etnografiche.
Turin, La Letteratura, 1888.
Very rare only edition of a pamphlet about native peoples of North America by the ethnographer and geographer Grossi.
£250
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GROUCHY, Nicolas de.
Praeceptiones dialecticae, Nicolao Gruchio Rotomagensi authore. Disputatio eiusdem, quid de nomine dialectices...
Paris, Gabriel Buon, 1563.
An apparently unrecorded edition of Grouchy’s abstract of his lectures on logic and Aristotelian dialectic. The philologist Nicolas de Grouchy (1510–1572) spent twelve years in Bordeaux (1535-47) as professor of rhetoric at the Collège de Guyenne (the top class was called ‘Classe de Rhétorique’),...
£750
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HADLEY, Arthur Twining.
Economics. An account of the relations between private property and public welfare.
New York and London, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896.
First edition. ‘In Economics Hadley went further than Marshall by explicitly developing the interrelations between property rights, economic evolution and economic efficiency. Hadley utilized the real world examples of the fisheries and mining to demonstrate the impact of ill-defined property rights...
£175
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HAREL, Charles.
Ménage sociétaire ou Moyen d’augmenter son bien-être en diminuant sa dépense, avec indication de quelques...
Paris, Bureau de la Phalange, à la librairie Sociale, 1839.
1. First edition of this work by the entrepreneur and inventor Charles Harel (1771-1852), a friend and disciple of Charles Fourier’s. This plan describes Harel’s project for the founding of a community of 200 celibates: a utopia of communal life detailing rules (‘love’, ‘the library’etc.)...
£975
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HOPKINS, William.
Address delivered at the Hull Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, September...
London, Taylor & Francis, 1853.
First edition, an 1853 Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science by its President William Hopkins (1793–1866), inscribed by the author and given to his erstwhile student Francis Galton (1822–1911). A mathematician and geologist, Hopkins became President of the British...
£350
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‘HURLBUT’ [i.e. HURLBERT], William Henry.
Pictures of Cuba.
London: M’Corquodale and Co. for Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1855.
First British edition, revised and retitled, issued in the ‘Traveller’s Library’ series. Pictures of Cuba was first published under the title Gan-Eden: or, Pictures of Cuba (Boston: 1854), and Hurlbert (1827-1895) states in his preface that, ‘In the short time that has elapsed...
£150
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[INDUSTRIOUS POOR, Charitable Corporation for the Relief of.]
The present state of the unhappy sufferers of the Charitable Corporation...
London, [n.p.], 1733.
First and only edition of an anonymous plea to Parliament for the rescue of the Charitable Corporation for the Relief of the Industrious Poor, a pawnbroker which granted credit at low interest to the ‘deserving poor’ who left a pledge. Founded in 1707, in the 1720s the Corporation came under scrutiny...
£250
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[INTERSEX.]
Three pamphlets.
Paris, 1892–1920.
A collection of rare French pamphlets on the subject of differences in sex development from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two of the three pamphlets are doctoral theses, covering the social impact of differences in sex development, and persistent müllerian duct syndrome (‘tubular...
£450
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[ISLE OF WIGHT.]
By-laws for the regulation and government of the poor, in the House of Industry, in the Isle of Wight.
Newport, J. Mallett, 1789.
First edition thus of a rare survival documenting the transition from the Poor Relief Act of 1662 to the New Poor Law. The Isle of Wight was granted a licence to manage a House of Industry in 1771. This book of its by-laws consequently reflects the growing belief that the poor should be regulated by...
£950
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JOHN OF SALISBURY.
Policraticus, sive de nugis curialium, et vestigiis philosophorum, libri octo. Accedit huic editioni eiusdem...
Leiden, Joannes Maire, 1639.
Attractive Maire edition of the two principal works of the twelfth-century scholar, diplomat, and bishop of Chartres, John of Salisbury, both completed by 1159 and dedicated to Thomas Becket.
£600
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JUSSIEU, Laurent Pierre de.
Antoine et Maurice. Ouvrage qui a obtenu le prix proposé par la Société Royale pour l’amélioration...
Paris, L. Colas, 1821.
First edition, rare, of this unsurprisingly moralising novel by the writer, geologist, and natural historian Laurent Pierre de Jussieu (1792-1866), written in response to a competition held by the Royal Society of the Improvement of Prisons to find the best book to circulate amongst inmates.
£250
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[JUVENILE.]
A Token of Remembrance from a Mother to her absent Children, comprising simple Tales, Dialogues, and easy Poetry, adapted...
London, William Darton, 58, Holborn Hill, 1822.
First edition of this collection of moral tales and poetry for children, compiled by a mother for her young daughter, from the lending library of the newly established Coast Guard.
£350
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[JUVENILE.]
Preliminary lessons on the history of England, originally compiled for private use, and now adapted to the junior...
Taunton, J. Poole, 1821.
Later edition of this uncommon Taunton-printed sketch of English history for use in primary schools, which first appeared in 1809. After brief notes on Julius Caesar, the Saxons, and notable pre-Conquest kings, the book offers a short overview of the character of each monarch (and monarch substitute)...
£135