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.
-
[PAPER TRADE.]
Arrest du conseil d’état du roi, portant modération et interprétation de plusieurs articles du tarif des...
[Besançon?, 1772?]
A seemingly unrecorded issue of this decree governing tariffs on paper and cardboard in Louis XV’s France, with no imprint but with the colophon ‘fait à Besançon le 18 avril 1772, signé, Lacoré’.
£175
-
[PARIS UPRISING.]
Votez toujours. Je ferai le reste [Always vote. I’ll do the rest].
Paris, Comite d'initiative pour un movement revolutionnaire, Imprimerie Robert et Cie, 1968.
First edition. A striking image of General De Gaulle patting France on the head for obediently voting, a baton cunningly concealed behind him. 1968 was a year when passions were flying high in France. The communist and socialist parties had formed an alliance in February with a view to replacing...
£550
-
PASCOLI, Alessandro.
Nuovo metodo per introdursi ad imitazion de’ geometri con ordine, chiarezza, e brevità nelle piu sottili...
Venice, Andrea Poletti, 1721.
Scarce second edition (first 1702) of this work of philosophy and medicine by the Perugian scholar Pascoli (1669–1757).
£450
-
[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
-
PASSI, Marco Celio.
Memorie sulla vita di Donna Giuseppina Passi nata Marchesa Lomellini di Genova.
Bergamo, Stamperia Mazzoleni, 1832.
Scarce first edition of a touching memorial to Giuseppina Passi (1809–1831), born Marchioness Lomellini of Genoa, who died at the age of twenty-one following complications in childbirth.
£300
-
[PATCH, Richard, defendant.]
The Trial of Richard Patch, for the wilful Murder of Mr. Isaac Blight, on the 23d of Sept. 1805, at...
London: Printed, by the express Appointment of the Sheriff, for Edward Jeffery ... Sold by John Walker ... H. D. Symonds ... Harris ... W....
First edition of this report of a famous trial (there was a rival version from the shorthand of Joseph and W. B. Gurney). Richard Patch (1770?-1806) was an unsuccessful farmer near Exeter who mortgaged his farms in 1803 and departed to London, where he entered the service of Isaac Blight, a ship-breaker...
£250
-
PAULUS DE CASTRO.
Super primo, secundo et tertio libro Codicis.
Venice, [Andreas Torresanus, de Asula], 30 June 1487.
Rare second edition of Paulus de Castro’s commentary on the first three books of the Codex of Justinian, from the library of Dürer’s closest friend Willibald Pirckheimer.
£12500
-
PAZZI, Antonio de, and Torquato TASSO.
Stanze inedite di Antonio de Pazzi e di Torquato Tasso in biasimo ed in lode delle...
Venice, Picotti, 1810.
Scarce first edition of verses ‘in blame and in praise of women’ by Antonio de Pazzi and Torquato Tasso, edited by the eminent antiquary and librarian Jacopo Morelli (1745–1819) from a previously unpublished manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, and dedicated to Baron Antonio Mulazzani...
£200
-
PELLISSON, [Paul].
Histoire de l’Academie Françoise par M. Pelisson [sic], nouvelle edition, augmentee des deux discours...
Amsterdam, Jean Frederic Bernard, 1717.
An attractive prize copy of Pellisson’s history of the Académie française, with a printed presentation label from the Jesuit college in the Occitan town of Carpentras, outside Avignon.
£150
-
PERRIN, M.
[Jean Baptiste]. Fables amusantes, avec une Table générale & particulière des Mots & de leur Signification en Anglois,...
A Londres chez B. Law & Fils …T. Cadell … P. Elmsly … 1793
Seventh edition of a popular educational work first published in 1771. Jean Baptiste Perrin (fl. 1767-98) worked as a private French tutor in Dublin. He was a prolific author of works for learning French (the advertisements at the end list 18 of them, several commended by the Monthly Review). The 140...
£75
-
PERRY, Ralph Barton (1876-1957), American philosopher.
Two autograph letters signed and one typed letter signed (‘Ralph Barton...
Cambridge (Mass.), 1945-1946.
Perry, who became a leading realist philosopher, had intended to train for the ministry and viewed the academic career he achieved as a vocation. He was active within Harvard and the wider field of the American Philosophical Association and campaigned on a variety of causes. These letters are written...
£500
-
PERUCCI, Francesco.
Pompe funebri di tutte le nationi del mondo, raccolte dale storie sagre et profane.
Verona, Francesco Rossi, 1639.
First edition of Perucci’s account of the funeral practices of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, extensively illustrated with engravings copied in reverse from Porcacchi’s 1574 Funerali antichi di diversi popoli, et nationi, inscribed by a Scottish antiquary and documented book collector....
£975
-
PETTY, William, Sir.
Another Essay in Political Arithmetick, concerning the growth of the City of London: with the measures,...
London, printed by H.H. for Mark Pardoe, 1683.
First edition, scarce – seemingly unique in its uncut and unbound state – of Petty’s first work of political arithmetic, a landmark work of statistics, demography, and economics.
£12000
-
PHILIDOR, François-André Danican (William Stopford KENNY, translator).
Analysis of the game of chess … illustrated...
& J. Allman, 1819.
First edition of William Kenny’s translation of L’analyse du jeu des Échecs. For many years Kenny (1787/8–1867) ‘kept a classical school at 5 Fitzroy Street, Fitzroy Square, London, later moving to Richmond, Surrey. In 1856 Kenny stated that he had been a teacher for forty...
£200
-
[PHILOSOPHY.
Philosophy course on logic. Brussels, early eighteenth century?]
[Brussels, early eighteenth century?]
An elegant manuscript philosophy course on logic, likely produced at a Jesuit college, where logic was one of the three philosophy courses taught along with natural philosophy and metaphysics.
£375
-
PICK, G. Vesian.
Digest of political economy: the principles of John Stuart Mill.
London, Swan Sonnerschein & Co., 1893.
Second edition (first 1892) of Pick’s epitome of J.S. Mill’s Principles of political economy. Stating his aim as to ‘present a bird’s-eye view of Political Economy’, with a secondary intent of being used by students as a companion volume to the treatise itself, Pick aims to bring a new simplicity...
£100
-
PIECK, Henri C.
10 Dagen Die De Wereld Deden Wankelen.
Amsterdam, Skovino, 1927.
A rare lithograph of Pieck’s dramatic illustration for Ten Days that Shook the World (October in English), a silent film commissioned by the Soviet government to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the October Revolution. Made by the director of Battleship Potemkin (1925), Sergei Eisenstein, the...
£300
-
PIEROTTI, A.
Il cervello e la difesa delle donne sestine giocose ... precedute da indirizzo, e dedica in vario metro.
Florence, N. Fabbrini, 1842.
First and only edition, very rare, of this misogynistic poem by the Florentine poet Pierotti, in which he pretends to explore the female brain with reference to Galen, accusing women of, for example, greed, theft, cunning, vanity, and irascibility. The second part is a somewhat patronising defense...
£375
-
PIERTZ, Leonhard, Praesidens; Johann Ernst SCHLERETH, Respondens.
De sacramentis in specie, Eucharistia et Poenitentia...
Würzburg, Johann Michael Kleyer, 1703.
A good copy of this rare Würzburg dissertation on the sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance, under the Jesuit professor Leonhard Piertz (1662–1741). The dissertation discusses when the Eucharist was instituted, what verbal formulae are necessary for consecration, whether the Eucharistic sacrifice...
£175
-
[PINNOCK, William].
A catechism of the history of France, containing a clear outline of all the important changes which that country...
London, Printed by Bensley and Sons for Pinnock and Maunder, [c. 1819].
Second edition of this much-reprinted guide to French history for British youth from the Roman conquest of Gaul to the fall of Napoleon, one of Pinnock’s many catechisms on historical and scientific subjects.
£125