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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[BEER.]
Jenaischer allgemeiner Bier-Comment nebst angehängtem Bier-Prozess.
‘Eschwig, Otter & Kunitz, 183*.’
An apparently unrecorded humorous handbook of drinking rules for students at the university of Jena, famous both as a centre of German idealism and Romanticism, and for its professors, who included Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, and Schlegel.
£375
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BELLONI, Girolami, Marchese.
Del Commercio dissertazione.
Rome, Niccolo and Marco Pagliarini, 1757.
Second edition to be authorized by Belloni, (first, 1750) – the first edition to include the author’s considerations on ‘imaginary money’ (pp. 135-154) – of a work notable for its argument in favour of restrictions on the export of money by the Vatican banker Girolamo Belloni (1688–1760)....
£300
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[BENDISCIOLI, Faustino.]
Quadro ossia saggio epilogato del Sistema di liberta’ proclamato dai Francesi.
Milan, Stamperia [dei Patrioti d’Italia] di Strada Nuova, [1799].
An impassioned tract attacking the claims of a new life of liberty promoted in Europe after the French Revolution, very rarely to be found in any of the three editions published in the same year.
£200
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[BENN, Anthony, father, and Charles Anthony BENN, son.]
NICHOLS W., MAYLAND, GROOM, J., photographers. Photographic...
Late 1850s–early 1900s.
A charming collection of photographs and newspaper cuttings spanning some fifty years, compiled by a father and son during their Cambridge days, including a letter of thanks from Trinity Hall to the son, Charles Anthony Benn, for his endowment to the college, which now funds the Benn Bursary.
£1200
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BENTHAM, Jeremy.
Plan of Parliamentary Reform, in the Form of a Catechism, with Reasons for each Article. With an Introduction,...
London: Printed in the Year 1817. Re-printed and Re-published, with Notes and Alterations, by Permission of the Author, by T. J. Wooler … 1818.
First edition thus of an inexpensive reprint of Bentham’s Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1817), the style adapted by Thomas Wooler, with Bentham’s permission, to ‘render it more easy of comprehension to the popular reader’. In this form it first appeared in instalments in Wooler’s radical...
£225
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BENTLEY, Richard, et al.; [Charles BURNEY, editor].
Richardi Bentleii et doctorum virorum epistolae, partim mutuae....
London, William Bulmer, 1807.
First edition of the correspondence of Richard Bentley, a large paper copy splendidly bound and presented by Charles Burney to the British Museum’s Keeper of Manuscripts, with attractive later provenance.
£1750
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BERGERET, [Guillaume].
Advertisement of M. Bergeret, Bookseller.
[Bordeaux, c. 1787.]
A very rare advertisement card of a provincial bookseller from Bordeaux, a scarce piece of trade ephemera.
£75
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BERKELEY, George.
Traktat o nachalakh chelovecheskogo znaniia.
St Petersburg, O. N. Popov, 1905.
First Russian edition of George Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge, translated by E. Dobolsky and edited by N.G. Dobolsky. The text, on the chief causes of error and difficulty in the sciences, examining the grounds of scepticism, atheism and irreligion, was first published in Dublin in 1710,...
£500
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BERRYAT, Jean, et al., editors.
Receuil de Mémoires, ou Collection de Pièces Académiques, concernant la Médicine, l’Anatomie...
Dijon, Auxerre, Paris and Liège, F. Desventes, F. Fournier, et al., 1754-86.
The scarce first collected edition of these scientific papers from all over Europe (lacking only the last five volumes of the Partie Française), including among its contributors such famous names as Huygens, Leeuwenhoek, Hevelius, De La Hire, Mariotte, Réaumur, La Condamine, Haller, Maupertuis, Boyle,...
£6000
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BEVERIDGE, William Henry.
Full employment in a free society: a report ...
London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, [1944].
First edition of the second report by the social reformer and economist W. H. Beveridge (1879-1963), a sequel to the epoch-making Beveridge report on Social Insurance and Allied Services made to the Government in December 1942. Beveridge had earlier published Unemployment: a Problem of Industry (1909),...
£50
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[BEWICK, Thomas?]
Twenty-six rubbings from engraved woodblocks of the heads of Kings and Queens and England, apparently never published...
[1790-1805?]
Twenty-six apparently unrecorded wood-engravings – heads of the monarchs of England from William the Conqueror to George III – these images taken by rubbing from the blocks rather than printing. The engravings bear strong similarity to the 26 which appear in An Abridgement of the History...
£750
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BLANQUI, Jérôme Adolphe, l’Ainé.
Histoire de l’économie politique en Europe, depuis les anciens jusqu’à nos jours, suivie...
Paris, Guillaumin, 1837.
First edition of ‘the first major history of political economy’ (The New Palgrave). Blanqui (1798–1854) taught at the Institution Massin, where he came into contact with J. B. Say, who was greatly impressed by him. In 1833, he succeeded Say as holder of the chair of political and industrial economy...
£125
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BODEMER, Heinrich.
Die Wirkungen der Creditpapiere in Bezug die Vehmehrung der Banken in Deutschland.
Leipzig, Heinrich Hubner, 1853.
First edition of a rare German treatise on banking, money, paper money and credit. Bodemer argues for a bettering and widening of credit in Prussia at a crucial time of its economic development, where both production and trade required ever more more advanced, unified and modern financial tools.
£125
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BOETHIUS, Severinus; Richard GRAHAM, Viscount Preston, translator.
Of the Consolation of Philosophy. In five Books....
London, J. D. for Awnsham and John Churchill, and Francis Hildyard, York, 1695.
First edition of this translation by the diplomat, politician and Jacobite conspirator Richard Graham, 1st Viscount Preston (1648–1695).
£950
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BOLAÑO, Roberto.
2666.
Barcelona, Editorial Anagrama, [2004].
First edition of the Chilean writer’s last novel, the major preoccupation of the last five years of his life.
£500
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[BOLINGBROKE, Henry St John, Viscount].
Letters, on the Spirit of Patriotism: on the Idea of a Patriot King: and on the State of...
London: Printed for A. Millar … 1749.
First authorised edition. Written in 1738 for the Prince of Wales, the manuscript was then entrusted to Pope who had it printed, to Bolingbroke’s fury: he bought up the entire edition and had it burnt in October 1744 (only two imperfect copies survive, at the British Library and Princeton). He later...
£375
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BONAPARTE, Jerôme-Napoléon.
Letter signed as governor of Les Invalides to the members of the Conseil d’administration de la...
Paris, Hôtel des Invalides, 16 February 1849.
Jérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte (1784–1860) was the youngest brother of Napoleon I and reigned as Jerome Napoleon I, King of Westphalia, between 1807 and 1813. He became governor of Les Invalides when his nephew Prince Louis Napoleon became president of the second French Republic in 1848.
£300
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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
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[BOOKBINDER.]
Sentence rendue en la chambre criminelle du Châtelet de Paris, qui condamne Guillaume Maillet, maître relieur,...
Paris, Jean-Charles Desaint, 1782.
Scarce pamphlet documenting the misdemeanours of the Parisian master bookbinder Guillaume Maillet.
£575
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BOSE, Johann Andreas.
Io. Andr. Bosii introductio generalis in notitiam rerumpublicarum orbis universi. Accedunt eiusdem dissertationes...
Jenae, Johann Bielke, 1676.
First edition of a pioneering work of statistics and rare Americanum, by the philosopher and historian Johann Andreas Bose (1624-1674). Bose’s crucial intuition as a student of human societies lies in his advocacy of interdisciplinary investigations. His work ‘on all the states in the world’ marshalls...
£1500