GUAZZO, Marco.

Historie di M. Marco Guazzo di tutti i fatti degni di memoria nel mondo successi dal 1524 sino a l’anno 1549....

Venice, Giolito, 1549.

First edition thus, this copy owned by the future Pope Clement XII, of a remarkable history of recent and contemporary events, first published in 1540 and here updated by almost ten years, resuming the account of world event and Italian politics and including references to American history from 1522.

£3600

MILBANK, Augustus Sussex.

A Treatise upon the political & social Condition of Europe, from the Fall of the Roman Empire, down to...

[Richmond, M. Bell for] London, Messrs Hatchard & Son, and Richmond, M. Bell, 1847.

First and only edition of a rare Yorkshire-printed treatise of social history by an amateur historian and educational enthusiast, inscribed by the author to the Countess of Sandwich.

£125

JEVONS, William Stanley.

La moneta ed il meccanismo dello scambio.

Milan, Fratelli Dumolard, 1876.

First Italian edition of ‘a most readable volume’ (DNB), written quite late in Jevons’s life and published in English the previous year as part of The International Scientific Series. ‘In preparing this volume, I have attempted to write a descriptive essay on the past and present monetary systems...

£50

[ISELIN, Isaak]. [WANDALL, Peder Topp trans.]

Philosophiske og Patriotiske Drømme af en Menneskeven. Oversatte af Peder Topp Wandall.

Copenhagen, Aug. Frid. Stein, 1774.

First Danish edition of Iselin’s earliest work, the very successful Filosofische und patriotische Träume. First published in 1755, a couple of years after his deeply affecting journey to France, having met among others Rousseau, Fontenelle and Buffon. His reformist version of utopia, a response to...

£250

[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

HURRY, Thomas.

Tables of interest, from one pound to five hundred millions, for one day; by which the interest for any sum of money...

[Yarmouth], Printed for the author, and sold by Messrs. Robinson, London; and Downes and March, Yarmouth, 1786.

One of two editions published in 1786, the other one undated, ESTC does not give any precedence. Tables for calculating interest at a quarter, half, three-quarters, three, four, and five percent; intended as a quick reference for bankers and merchants. Hurry precedes his tables with four pages of example...

£150

[HILLER, Johann Adam, editor].

Anecdoten zur Lebensgeschichte berühmter französischer, deutscher, italienischer, holländischer...

Leipzig, Lankisch, 1762.

Scarce first edition of Hiller’s two-volume collection of literary, philosophical and historical anecdotes. The editor’s note at the end mentions the contemporary publication of a French work of similar inspiration, and states the editor’s intention to translate it and publish it as a sequel to...

£175

HERYNG, Zygmunt.

Teorja i praktyka ekonomji.

[Warsaw, G. Centnerszwer], 1897.

First edition, very rare, of Heryng’s Theory and practice of economics. Zygmunt Heryng, Polish economist and political activist, was deeply concerned with economics as a science. He saw it as a systematic and conscious pursuit of efficiency in resource allocation in relation to targets. One of the...

£150

[HENRI IV.]

Edict du roy, portant deffences de porter sur les habits aucuns draps, ne toille d’or ou d’argent. Paris, P....

Paris, F. Morel and P. Mettayer, 1620.

Three very scarce works on the subject of luxury clothing and accessories employing gold and silver, of significance for the insights they provide into debates around economic and moral regulation in France in the early 17th century.

In his edict of 1607, Henri IV condemns such luxury clothing as ‘vaine...

£1950

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

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

[LUZAC, Elie, attributed].

L’homme plus que machine.

‘A Londres’ [Leiden?], 1748.

First edition of this attack against materialism and La Mettrie’s L’homme machine, published in the same year. The work was included in the 1774 edition of the Oeuvres of La Mettrie, volume III.

£250

[KERNER, Johann Georg.]

Reise über den Sund.

Tübingen, in der J.G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1803.

Rare first edition of this historical, political and economic analysis of Sweden, in epistolary form, complete with a folding table detailing land tax revenues by region.

£250

[TRENTO, Giulio].

Gli spiriti. Paragoni poetici. Dialogo d’un giovine, ed un cinico dell’andare alla Guerra. Diario mensuale...

Treviso, G. Trento, [1788].

Only edition, mentioned only in one or two pieces of local antiquarian history but not recorded in any of the usual library catalogues. An ephemeral publication containing a short story, a literary divertissement linking passages from Parini’s Mattino with an unidentified poem on gambling and an ode...

£300

[TOYNBEE, Arnold.]

“Progress and poverty,” a criticism of Mr. Henry George. Being two lectures delivered in St. Andrew’s...

London, Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1883.

First edition of the transcript of two lectures delivered in 1883 by the social reformer and political economist Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) criticising Henry George’s Progress and Poverty (1879).

£50

MENGOTTI, Francesco.

Il Colbertismo dissertazione coronata dalla Reale Società Economica Fiorentina li 13 Giugno 1792. Di Francesco...

Venice, Tommaso Bettinelli, 1792.

First edition under this title, absolute second edition, revised by the author and published the same year as the first. This dissertation had first appeared under the title Ragionamento della libertà naturale del commercio de’ generi greggi. Mengotti’s advocacy of free trade was a radical rejection...

£100

[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

[THE BOOK COLLECTOR.]

A special Number to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of Bernard Quaritch Ltd.

The Book Collector, 1997.

A collection of essays together recounting the history of Bernard Quaritch Ltd, published by The Book Collector to commemorate the firm’s sesquicentenary in 1997.

£25

CARTER, John, and Graham POLLARD.

The Firm of Charles Ottley, Landon & Co.: Footnote to An Enquiry.

London, Rupert Hart-Davis, and New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948.

First edition of Carter and Pollard’s further research into the forgeries of Thomas J. Wise. The authors examine pamphlets of Swinburne’s poetry published under the imprint of ‘Charles Ottley, Landon & Co’ and expose them as the work of the book-collector and forger Thomas James Wise (1859–1937)....

£12

FREEMAN, Arthur.

Historical Forgery in Romanophobe Britain: Robert Ware’s Irish Fictions revisited.

London, 2021.

A new and particular account of the anti-Catholic and anti-separatist forgeries of Robert Ware, the seventeenth-century Irish antiquary, who has been called ‘the most audacious fabricator of historical documents who ever lived’. Ware’s formidable output of lively if malicious fictions has...

£20