Search results
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CONDILLAC, Etienne Bonnot de.
Traité des sensations, a Madame la Comtesse de Vassé.
Londres & Paris, Chez de Bure l’aine, 1754.
First edition of this great classic of psychology and Condillac’s most important work: ‘no student of the history of philosophy can afford to neglect [it]’ (IESS, vol 3, pp. 213). The work ‘had a double purpose: to show how modifications of mind, or impressions received by way of the senses,...
£775
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CONDORCET,
Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de. Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progres de l’espirit humain.
Paris, Agasse, L’an III [1795].
First edition of Condorcet’s main work, the summation of the Enlightenment belief in man’s perfectibility, the outline which provided humanity with a view of its own history as a narrative of progress and emancipation. Condorcet ‘forecasts the destruction of inequality between nations and classes,...
£1775
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FERGUSON, Adam.
An essay on the history of civil society.
Edinburgh, A. Millar and T. Caddell, 1768.
Third edition, corrected: the edition owned by Thomas Jefferson.
£700
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HELVÉTIUS, Claude Adrien.
De l’homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles et de son éducation.
Londres, Société Typographique [recte The Hague], 1773.
A rare edition, published in the same year as the first, which appeared in mid-June 1773, eighteen months after the author’s death. ‘In this edition, there is no comma after “intellectuelles”, line 6 of title reads “et de son”and the titlepage ornament is a flower with leaves around the petals’...
£975
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MALTHUS, Thomas Robert.
Principles of political economy considered with a view to their practical application.
London, Murray, 1820.
First edition. The Principles were developed through controversy with Ricardo, especially with regard to the theory of value, but the origins of the essay are in the Essay, which constituted Malthus’s earliest writings on prices, income and savings. The difference that emerges between...
£1400
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MILLAR, John.
Observations concerning the distinction of ranks in society. Under the following heads: 1. Of the ranks and condition...
London, Murray, 1773.
Second London edition, ‘greatly enlarged’, first published 1771. The first section of Millar’s book is a study of matrilineal ‘savage’ societies, in which early social development counts most when it comes to kinship with the mother, is remarkably prescient (see Morgan, Systems)....
£1450
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[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. Montesquieu’s masterpiece of political theory, the principles of which formed the ideological basis of the French and American revolutions and were the cornerstone of the United States Constitution. Montesquieu argues that culture cannot be abstracted from the climate...
£25750
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[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.
£1600
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MONTESQUIEU, Charles Louis de Secondat.
Miscellaneous pieces … translated from the new edition of his works in quarto printed...
London, Wilson and Durham, 1759.
Only edition thus, apparently the first appearance in English of these pieces. It contains, amongst other titles: the Essay on taste, which was published in England in the same year under Alexander Gerard’s work of the same title; eleven Persian letters that did not appear in his main work by that...
£525
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ROUSSEAU, Jean Jacques.
[half-title: Oeuvres de J. J. Rousseau. Tome neuvieme. Contenant les …] Lettres écrites de la montagne....
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. In 1762, the same year that the Contrat...
£1150
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[SINCLAIR, Sir John].
Account of the origin of the Board of Agriculture, and its progress for three years after its establishment....
London, Bulmer, 1796.
First and only edition, rare in commerce. Sinclair pushes the importance of statistical agricultural surveying in his capacity as president of the Board of Agriculture, founded in 1793. The agricultural improver Arthur Young was his secretary. This includes the blank sample tables for population data...
£350
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ADORNO Theodore W. Else FRENKEL-BRUNSWIK Daniel J. LEVINSON and R. Nevitt SANFORD.
The authoritarian personality.
New York, Harper Brothers, 1950.
First edition. Theodore Adorno is well known as having been a leading light of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Less known, but nevertheless worthy of note, are his co-authors, each of whom made notable contributions to the field of psychology. The authoritarian personality is itself a groundbreaking...
£225
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ARNOLD, Matthew.
Culture and anarchy: an essay in political and social criticism.
[N.p.], Smith, Elder & Co. 1869.
First edition in book form, scarce, of Arnold’s momentous sociological essays, which had appeared in the in the Cornhill Magazine in 1867-68.
£250
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BASCOM, John.
Growth of nationality in the United States: a social study.
New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899.
First edition. As President of the University of Wisconsin Bascom advocated the ‘Wisconsin Iidea’ the Universities should work to improve the lives of people beyond the borders of its campus. ‘In a way unmatched by any leader of a major American university in his time, Bascom outlined a social...
£175
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[BELL, Benjamin].
Three essays on taxation of income, with remarks on the late act of parliament on that subject. On the national...
London, T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1799.
First edition. On 3 December 1798, the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Pitt the Younger, denounced the ineffectuality of traditional methods of taxation and announced the introduction of a tax ‘upon the leading branches of income’. One of the major weaknesses of his plan was...
£250
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CALVERT, George.
Introduction to social science, a discourse in three parts.
New York, Redfield, 1856.
First edition. The first to hold the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the newly established College of arts and sciences at the University of Baltimore, Calvert went on to be elected major of Newport, Rhode Island; he keenly translated and wrote essays on many pieces of European literature. In his Introduction...
£195
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CAREY, Henry Charles.
Essay on the rate of wages, with an examination of the cause of the differences in the condition of the labouring...
Philadelphia, Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1835.
First edition. In this, his first work, Carey (1793–1879) opposed trade restrictions as running counter to the providential order, and postulated harmony between capitalists and workers, the former benefitting from rising profits and the latter from wages that rose as a result of the accumulation of...
£275
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CAREY, Henry Charles.
The Past, the present and the future.
Philadelphia, Carey & Hart, 1848.
First edition. Carey vigorously appeals for tariff protection and attacks the Ricardian theory of rent. He argues that ‘the historical sequence of cultivation at least in the United States was the exact reverse of the one proposed by Ricardo, namely, from inferior to superior land, apparently because...
£375
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CAREY, H.
C. The British Treaties of 1871 & 1874: letters to the President of the United States.
Philadelphia, Collins, 1875.
First edition of a pamphlet which marks the completion of the arc in Carey’s thinking regarding bilateral trade deals, described in his time as ‘reciprocity’ arrangements. Having endorsed such deals early in his career as acts that promoted free trade, in the 1840s and 1850s Carey came to believe...
£195
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CAREY,
H.C. Commerce, Christianity, and civilization, versus British free trade. Letters in reply to the London times.
Collins, Printer, Philadelphia [PA], 1876.
Throughout his political economy, Carey asserted that there was a harmony of interests among men and nations in their economic relationships. Unfortunately, the British system of free trade was not in keeping with this harmony. It was his opinion that countries like India, for example, that were in trade-dependent...
£195