Advanced search

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.

Sort by
Author
Price
Date
Title

  1. MANDEVILLE, Bernard.

    The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, public Benefits. Edited and with an Introduction by Douglas Garman.

    London, Wishart and Co., 1934.

    First edition thus. Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees was first published as a poem in 1705, entitled The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turned Honest, which is printed in this edition as first text, and later expanded into a prose work entitled The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices, Publick...

    £190

  2. MARZAGLIA, Gaetano.

    Fascetto di pratiche matematiche spiegate alle persone popolari per uso del comercio umano, e civile, in questa...

    Verona, Dionisio Ramanzini, 1780.

    A lovely copy of the second edition, considerably augmented from the first of 1754, of this book of applied mathematical problems by the Veronese mathematician Gaetano Marzaglia (or Marcegaglia, 1716–1787), heavily influenced by the work of Wolff, who provides the motto to the book, and whose works...

    £650

  3. MCCULLOCH, John Ramsay.

    Principes d’économie politique suivis de quelques recherches relatives à leur application et d’un...

    Paris, Guillaumin et Cie, 1851.

    First and only complete French translation, an association copy signed by the translator for the historian and member of the Académie française Pierre-François Tissot, and afterwards in the library of the economist and statist Michel Chevalier, who like Tissot held a chair at the Collège de France.

    £300

  4. McCULLOCH, John Ramsay, and Augustin PLANCHE (translator).

    Principes d’économie politique, suivis de quelques recherches relatives...

    Paris, A. Moussin for Guillaumin et Cie, 1863.

    French translation of McCulloch’s Principles. First published in 1825, the book provided the first synthetic modern definition of political economy and quickly established itself as one of the most referenced manuals on the subject. ‘For McCulloch was reserved the honour of presenting in a popular...

    £200

  5. MEGUSCHER, Francesco.

    Memoria … in risposta al quesito additare la migliore e più facile maniera per rimittere i boschi nelle...

    Milan, presso l’I.R. Istituto, 1847.

    Uncommon first edition of this comprehensive report on the best means of reversing the deforestation of the mountains of Lombardy in a way that would be both environmentally sustainable and economically profitable.

    £950

  6. MENDONÇA, Manoel Teixeira Cabral de.

    O Guarda-livros moderno ou curso completo de instrucções elementares sobre as operações...

    Lisbon, Impressão Regia, 1823.

    Second edition, corrected and expanded, of vol. I, first editions of vol. II and the Supplemento. The first volume provides a broad overview of the history of commercial exchange, including present practices. Mendonça states that his intention is to demonstrate the benefits of studying geography, insurance,...

    £300

  7. [MILDMAY, William, Sir.]

    The Laws and Policy of England, relating to Trade, examined by the Maxims and Principles of Trade...

    London, printed and sold by T. Harrison … and by J. Robson … 1765.

    First edition, an unjustly neglected study of the politics and economics of international trade, inspired in part by comparison with France, where Mildmay spent five years in the 1750s.

    £350

  8. MILLAR, John.

    Observations concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society. Under the following Heads: I. Of the Ranks and Condition...

    London, J. Murray, 1773. 

    Second London edition, ‘greatly enlarged’, first published 1771.

    £1750

  9. MILL, John Stuart.

    A szabadságról. Fordította és az előszót írta Kállay Béni.

    Béni. Pest, Ráth Mór, 1867.

    Extremely rare (1 copy worldwide) first Hungarian edition of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. This translation, published in Pest, came out as the Habsburg Emperor accepted the consequences of a twenty-years-long strife for autonomy and rights on the part of Hungarian subjects. Mill’s anti-paternalistic...

    £975

  10. MILL, John Stuart.

    A szabadságról ... Angolból forditotta és az elöszót irta Kállay Béni.

    Pest, Kiadja Ráth Mór, 1867.

    First Hungarian edition of John Stuart Mill’s great essay On Liberty, with a lengthy introduction by the Austro-Hungarian statesman Béni Kállay (1839–1903). First published in 1859, Mill’s vastly influential essay was dedicated to his wife Harriet who had provided the stimulus for the...

    £450

  11. MILL, John Stuart, and Edward Livingston YOUMANS.

    Новѣйшее образованiе: его истинныя цѣли и требованiя....

    St Petersburg, Izdanie “Russkoi knizhnoi torgovli”, 1867.

    First edition in Russian of these two works, published in the original that same year.

    £100

  12. MILL, John Stuart, and Jánosi FERENCZ (translator).

    A képviseleti kormány.

    Pest, Emich Gusztáv Tulajdona, 1867.

    First Hungarian edition of Considerations on representative Government, Mill’s most important political work after On Liberty. In his major work on political institutions Mill ‘discusses to what extent forms of government are a matter of choice, the criterion of a “good form of government”, and...

    £875

  13. MILL, John Stuart; Hugo KOSTERKA and Václav PETRŽELKA, translators.

    O Svobodě. Přeložili H. Kosterka a V. Petrželka...

    Prague, Czech student magazine press, 1891.

    First edition in Czech of On Liberty (1859), very rare, translated by the prominent translator and publisher Hugo Kosterka (1867–1956), editor and co-founder of the Moderní revue, and Václav Petrželka (1869–1927).

    £650

  14. MILL, John Stuart; Jan VÁŇA, translator.

    O Individualitě. Z anglického jazyka přeložil J. Váňa …

    Váňa … Prague, Militký and Novák, 1880.

    First edition in Czech, very rare, of Mill’s ‘On Individuality’, being chapter three of On Liberty (1859) – the first portion of that text to appear in Czech, and perhaps the earliest appearance of anything by Mill in that language. The translator was Jan Váňa (1847–1915), whose output...

    £350

  15. [MILL, John Stuart, witness].

    Report from the Select Committee on the Income and Property Tax; together with the Proceedings of...

    [London], Ordered by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 1 August 1861.

    First edition. This is the concluding report of the Commons Select Committee that had been responsible for investigating possible modifications to income tax policy. John Stuart Mill appeared before the Committee on the 18 June 1861, where he reiterated his central belief that the current system of income...

    £175

  16. [NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH.]

    Regularization of Business Investment. A conference of the Universities-National Bureau...

    Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1954.

    First edition. ‘The question this book raises and helps to answer is whether the entire responsibility for preventing the next depression is to be left to government, or whether a leading role can be assumed by private enterprise, through regularization of investment expenditures. Twenty-six leading...

    £120

  17. NICHOLSON, Joseph Shield.

    Tenant’s Gain not Landlord’s Loss, and some other economic Aspects of the Land Question.

    Edinburgh, David Douglas, 1883.

    First edition. ‘The vitality of popular fallacies is remarkable, and the old mercantile notion of trade that one man’s gain is necessarily another man’s loss still prevails as regards compensation for agricultural improvements. The exposure of this and other fallacies is one of the aims of this...

    £250

  18. NIEUHOF, Jan, and Georg HORN (translator). 

    Legatio Batavica ad magnum Tartariae chamum Sungteium, modernum Sinae...

    Amsterdam, Jacob van Meurs, 1668. 

    First edition in Latin, beautifully illustrated, of Nieuhof’s account of his travels in China between 1655 and 1657, one of the most important early modern non-Jesuit studies. 

    £5000

  19. NIEUHOF, Jean, and Jean LE CARPENTIER (translator). 

    L’ambassade de la compagnie orientale des provinces unies...

    Leiden, Jacob de Meurs, 1665. 

    Lavishly illustrated first French edition of Nieuhof’s travels through China from 1655 to 1657. 

    £3500

  20. [OSBORNE, Francis.]

    Historical memoires on the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, and King James.

    London: Printed by T. Grismond, and are to be sold by T. Robinson … in Oxon. 1658.

    First edition of Osborne’s history of the reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI and I, two exemplary leaders of the Protestant English cause, with which Osborne was much taken in his works.

    £475