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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. HOLLANDER, Jacob Harry.

    Economic Liberalism.

    New York and Cincinnati, The Abingdon Press, [1925].

    First edition, dedicated ‘to the memory of Herbert B. Adams, who first taught me the meaning of liberalism’.

    £50

  2. 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

  3. [‘HYSON, Timothy’, pseud. Thomas LOWNDES].

    A Letter to Mr. Richard Twining, Tea Dealer, and One of the Candidates for...

    London, [C. Roworth] for the author, 1827.

    Second edition of the Letter to Mr Richard Twining, a public denunciation of the candidacy of the tea merchant Richard Twining (1749-1824) for a directorship of the East India Company in 1810. Twining, who had already been instrumental in the development of tea prices and taxation for many years,...

    £250

  4. [ISELIN, Isaak].

    Träume eines Menschenfreundes. Erster Theil.

    Basel, Johannes Schweighauser, 1776.

    Uncommon first edition, part one only (very rarely to be found complete with both parts), of the most mature expression of Iselin’s anti-Rousseau republicanism, a social ‘dream’ of great articulation and – arguably – applicability, residing confidently on the borderline between utopia and reformism,...

    £150

  5. JEVONS, William Stanley.

    Studies in deductive logic. A manual for students.

    London, Macmillan and Co., 1880.

    First edition. Jevons had been preoccupied with speculations into the science of logic from the early 1860s. In his work Elementary lessons in logic (1870), he had sought to give a clear notion of the results to which the discoveries of Boole and his predecessors necessarily led. The present work consists...

    £175

  6. 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

  7. JEVONS, William Stanley.

    ‘Preliminary account of certain logical inventions’, communicated March 19th, 1866 [in: Proceedings...

    London, Longman, Green, Reader, & Dyer; Liverpool, David Marples, 1867.

    First edition of the account of Professor Jevons’ communication on the ‘logical abacus’ and the ‘logical machine’, a precursor of his later ‘logical piano’.

    £350

  8. KRUG, Leopold.

    Abriss der Staatsökonomie oder Staatswirthschaftslehre ...

    Berlin, Realschulbuchhandlung, 1808.

    Rare first edition. Krug was a civil servant whose writings on political economy and statistics had to be carved out of ‘the odd spare hour’. From 1805 to 1834 he was heavily involved in the development and expansion of the Prussian Statistical Bureau, during which time he conducted numerous statistical...

    £250

  9. 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

  10. LAUDERDALE, James Maitland.

    An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth, and into the Means and Causes of its Increase....

    and London, T.N. Longman & O. Rees, 1804.

    First edition. Lauderdale ‘was the first in England to consider systematically the fundamental conceptions on which the science is based. In this respect alone he is in advance of Adam Smith’ (Palgrave II, p. 574). He has been described as a forerunner of Keynes, arguing ‘that over-saving was...

    £900

  11. LAWRENCE, William Beach.

    Two Lectures on Political Economy delivered at Clinton Hall, before the Mercantile Library Association...

    New York, G. & C & H. Carvill, 1832. 

    First edition, uncommon. The author, an American jurist and politician, was the son of Isaac Lawrence, President of the New York Branch of the Bank of the United States and a Presidential Elector. In his Lectures Lawrence deplored speculation as the mechanism which gives rise to boom-and-bust...

    £450

  12. [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

  13. LE PLAY, Frédéric.

    Les ouvriers européens. Tome premier [-6me].

    Tours, Alfred Mame et Fils, 1879. 

    Second, greatly enlarged edition. This groundbreaking, comprehensive work of sociology, which examines the working condition, domestic life and psychological aspects of European workers, had appeared in its first form in 1855 a single volume. ‘Since public opinion was not yet ready to accept his conclusions,...

    £750

  14. [LONDON ASSURANCE CORPORATION.]

    By-laws, orders, and rules, for the good government of the corporation of the London assurance....

    London, [n.p.], 1722.

    First edition of the by-laws of the London Assurance Corporation, which, along with The Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation, was constituted and granted sole rights, excepting private individuals, to the granting of assurance and bottomry by ‘The Bubble Act’ of 1720. The right to self-govern, reflected...

    £550

  15. [MABBUT, George].

    Sir Isaac Newton’s tables for renewing and purchasing the leases of cathedral-churches and colleges, according...

    London, printed for Thomas Astley, 1742

    Sixth edition, first published in 1686, this issue was sometimes also published with a separate title page and imprint reading, ‘The money’d man’s pocket-book’, London, 1742’ immediately preceding the title-page of the second part. A series of tables calculating the amounts owed on leases based...

    £125

  16. 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 Malthus...

    £1400

  17. [MALTHUS, Thomas Robert].

    Art. I - Essay on Political Economy. Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. VI. Part I. Edinburgh....

    The Quarterly Review Vol. XXX No. LX, January 1824, pp. 298-334.

    First edition. A review by Thomas Malthus of John Ramsay McCulloch’s famous essay on political economy.

    £100

  18. MALTHUS, Thomas Robert.

    An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a View of its past and present Effects on human Happiness;...

    London, Johnson, 1803.

    Second edition, first published 1798. Called the ‘Great Quarto’, it is the first to bear Malthus’s name and is so revised by Malthus as to be ‘regarded by [him] as a substantially new work’ (ODNB).

    £5750

  19. MALTHUS, T. R.

    Principles of political Economy considered with a View to their practical Application.

    London, John Murray, 1820.

    First edition of Malthus’s broadest treatment of issues in political economy, an attractive copy from the library of the economist and industrialist Robert Hyde Greg, a critic of Malthus’s.

    £5000

  20. MALTHUS, T. R.

    An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a View of its past and present Effects on human Happiness; with an...

    London, John Murray, 1817.

    Fifth edition, ‘with important additions’, of one of the most influential works in the history of economic thought, a handsome copy owned and possibly annotated by the economist and industrialist Robert Hyde Greg, a critic of Malthus’s.

    £2200