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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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  1. [LAPINI, Bernardo.]

    Vita di Madonna Onorata scritta da Bernardo Ilicino publicata per la prima volta sopra un codice del secolo...

    Milan, Giuseppe Bernardoni, 1843.

    First appearance in print of this life of the Sienese noblewoman Onorata Saracini (née Orsini, 1435–1457), by her contemporary, the late fifteenth-century physician and writer Bernardo Lapini (or Ilicini), here edited by the Milanese print and old master dealer Giuseppe Vallardi (1784–1863)...

    £350

  2. [LA ROCHE, Sophie von.] 

    Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim.  Von einer Freundin derselben aus Original-Papieren und andern...

    Leipzig, bey Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1771. 

    First edition of Sophie von La Roche’s (1730–1807) bestselling epistolary novel, a bestseller featuring kidnapping, travels from Germany to Scotland, and a false wedding ceremony, a direct forerunner to Goethe’s Werther.

    £750

  3. LA SALLE, Antoine de.

    Méchanique morale, ou essai sur l’art de perfectionner et d’employer ses organes, propres, acquis et...

    Geneva, [s.n.], 1789.

    Uncommon first edition of La Salle’s wide-ranging work in which he examines, inter alia, understanding, learning, reasoning, syllogism, the Baconian method, asking and answering questions, physiognomy, qualities of character, and eloquence. Having travelled widely in his youth – to Newfoundland,...

    £250

  4. LA SERRE, Jean-Puget de.

    Grab-Statt der weltlichen Ergötzlichkeiten, einstens in Französischer Sprache zubereitet … anjetzt...

    Regensburg, Johann Conrad Peetz und Bader, 1738.

    First edition in German of Tombeau des délices du monde, by the French dramatist and historian Jean-Puget de la Serre (1594–1665).

    £375

  5. LAUTERBACH, Barbara, and Georg Christoph LAUTERBACH.

    A group of five school exercise books comprising geographical dictations.

    Lenk, 1834–1849.

    A charming group of school exercise books from the Swiss village of Lenk im Simmental, unusually bound in decorated printed wrappers.

    £1250

  6. [LA VIGNE, André de, and Octavien de SAINT-GELAIS.]

    Le vergier dhonneur nouvellement imprime a Paris. De lentreprise et...

    [Paris, Pierre le Dru and Jean Petit, 1503.]

    Extremely rare first edition of the Vergier d’Honneur, a text about the expedition of Charles VIII to Italy; a remarkable copy preceded by three leaves of illuminated manuscript containing unrecorded verse and a spectacular miniature of a knight on horseback.

    £120000

  7. [LAW, John.]

    Abbildung des auf der Strasse Quincampoix in Paris entstandenen so berühmten Actien-Handel. Excudit C. Weigel nach...

    [1720.]

    This engraving is a German version of ‘Rue Quinquempoix en l'Année 1720’(BM Catalogue 1655). It gives a view, in angular perspective, of the Rue Quinquempoix, Paris, with crowds of persons assembled there during the share mania of the Mississippi, South Sea, and other schemes which bubbled in the...

    £1250

  8. LEE, Edwin.

    The Principal Baths of Germany [– The Baths of Nassau Baden and the adjacent Districts; – The Baths of central...

    London, Whittaker & Cp., Paris, Galignani & Cp., and Frankfurt & Wiesbaden, Charles Jugel 1840 [– 1841].

    First edition, scarce, of Edwin Lee’s two-volume survey of palliative bathing spots in Germany, including an appendix on the ‘Cold Water Cure’, a combination of induced sweating and cold-water therapy ‘of late very much in vogue’ (appendix).

    £350

  9. LEGGE, James. 

    The Chinese Classics: with a translation, critical and exegetical notes, prolegomena, and copious indexes … In...

    Hong Kong, at the author’s; London, Trübner & Co., 1861 [– 1865]. 

    First editions of the first four volumes of Legge’s monumental Chinese Classics, with parallel Chinese and English texts, detailed introductions, notes, and indexes. 

    £3750

  10. LE GROS, Nicolas.

    Meditations sur les epistres Catholiques de S. Jacques, S. Pierre, et St. Jean. Avec le texte Latin et François...

    Paris, chez Savoye, 1754.

    First edition of this extensive work of meditations by the Jansenist Nicolas Le Gros, presented in 1772 by the founder of the first free school for deaf children to Françoise Arnaud, a pupil at the school.

    £1250

  11. [LE GUERCHOIS, Madeleine d’Aguesseau, Madame.]

    Avis d’une mere a son fils.

    Paris, Desaint & Saillant, 1743.

    A popular work of maternal advice, in a simple vellum binding richly decorated by the master calligrapher Francois Nicolas Bédigis (1738–1814).

    £2750

  12. LELAND, John.

    The Itinerary of John Leland, in or about the Years 1535-1543. Edited by Lucy Toulmin Smith, with a Foreword by Thomas...

    London, Centaur Press Ltd, 1964.

    The authoritative edition of Leland’s Itinerary, a monument of English bibliography and antiquarian research. The Itinerary comprises the notes of the antiquary John Leland (c. 1503–1552) on his journeys through England and Wales during the dissolution of the monasteries. According...

    £50

  13. [LE MARCHE.]

    Deed relating to the sale of property in Beltrovato (a district of Morrovalle in the Province of Macerata in the Marche...

    [Rome, 1616.]

    A curiously bound public instrument notarised by the Apostolic Camera in Rome detailing the sale of property belonging to two brothers from the influential de’ Mozzi family of Macerata.

    £850

  14. [LE MERCIER DE LA RIVIÈRE, Pierre Paul].

    Die glückliche Nation, oder der Staat von Felizien. Ein Muster der vollkommensten Freyheit...

    Leipzig, Voss, 1794.

    Very rare first German edition of Le Mercier de la Rivière’s physiocratic utopia L’heureuse nation, ou Relation du gouvernement des Féliciens, which had first appeared in French in 1792.

    £1250

  15. [LE NOBLE, Pierre, and Eustache LE NOBLE (attributed).] 

    Les Amours d’Anne d’Austriche, Epouse de Louis 13.  Avec le Cardinal...

    ‘A Cologne, Chez Pierre Marteau, 1696’ [France, early eighteenth century]. 

    An early manuscript copy of a salacious – and treasonous – history arguing that Louis XIV was the illegitimate child of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Richelieu, bound with four engravings. 

    £850

  16. LÉVI-STRAUSS, Claude.

    The Tupí-Cawahíb.

    Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 1948.

    A set of offprints of four articles by Lévi-Strauss from the Smithsonian’s Handbook of South American Indians, inscribed by the author. In each article Claude Lévy-Strauss (1908–2009) provides an illustrated introduction to an Amazonian group, recording their history, social and political...

    £300

  17. LEWIS, Wyndham. 

    Doom of Youth …

    London, Chatto & Windus, 1932. 

    First English edition, one of Lewis’s scarcest works (only 549 copies avoided destruction).  Doom of Youth began life as a series of seven articles on youth politics in Time and Tide in June–July 1931, rounded off with a pair by G.K. Chesterton; it was expanded and first published...

    £2000

  18. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    The Old Gang and the New Gang.

    London, Desmond Harmsworth, 1933.

    First edition, binding variant (1), a work on ‘youth cults’ and the rise of European dictatorships. Bridson’s review was not especially complimentary, noting ‘that peculiar “kiddish” idiom which Mr. Lewis uses to advantage in his satiric novels and to little purpose elsewhere … We can excuse...

    £250

  19. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    Left Wings Over Europe: or, how to make a War about Nothing.

    London, Jonathan Cape, [1936].

    First edition, first printing, a reiteration of the delusions about Hitler that Lewis had first presented in Hitler (1931), alongside a rejection of the Internationalism he had argued so firmly for in The Art of Being Ruled and would later espouse once more. Lewis afterwards dismissed the...

    £500

  20. LEWIS, Wyndham.

    America and Cosmic Man.

    London and Brussels, Nicholas and Watson Ltd., [1948].

    First edition, second state binding as always (the first, in green cloth, was rejected by Lewis as ‘hideous’ and was used on only 3 trial copies). In hand by 1943, not finished until 1946 and then rejected by American publishers until it finally found a British home in 1948, America and Cosmic Man...

    £200