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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. SCHREBER, Daniel Gottfried.

    Sammlung verschiedener Schriften, welche in die öconomischen, Policey- und cameral- auch andere Wissenschaften...

    Halle, im Verlag Johann Jacob Curts, 1755-65.

    First edition, a complete set of this collection of agro-economical articles and essays. Schreber was the first professor of economics at Leipzig. His Abhandlung von Kammergütern appeared in 1743. In these collected essays he assembled his own treatises and those of other authors to provide a systematic...

    £1250

  2. SCHREBER, Johann Christian.

    Botanisch-Oeconomische Abhandlung vom Grasbaue. Preisschrift, welche die, in den öconomischen Nachrichten,...

    Leipzig, Johann Wendler, 1763.

    First separate edition of this prize-winning treatise on grass and hay, first published in the Ökonomische Nachrichten.

    £75

  3. SCHUMACHER, H., Professor.

    Autograph letter signed (‘H. Schumacher’) to a colleague.

    Bonn, den Coblenzerstrasse 83, 10 February 1915.

    Schumacher’s spirited response to a colleague who had asked for Schumacher’s opinion on a letter he intended to publish in an American newspaper. Schumacher charges him with completely misunderstanding both the political situation and public opinion in the USA. He criticises the German attitude towards...

    £150

  4. SCIALOJA, Antonio.

    I Principî della economia sociale esposti in ordine ideologico … II. edizione riveduta, corretta ed aumentata.

    Turin, Giuseppe Pomba, 1846.

    Second edition, enlarged. Antonio Scialoja (1817–1877) studied at Naples, publishing the Principi della economia sociale (1840) there when he was only 22. It proved a great success in Italy and elsewhere, receiving many editions in Italian and a translation into French in 1843. In 1846, the year of...

    £75

  5. [SCOTT, Walter, Sir.]

    Ivanhoe; A Romance. By “The Author of Waverley,” &c. … In three Volumes … Second Edition.

    Edinburgh, [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Archibald Constable & Co., and London, Hurst, Robinson, & Co., 1820.

    Stated second edition but in fact a third issue of the first, published on 15 January; the first issue, published on 20 December the previous year, is similarly dated 1820.

    £375

  6. SENECA the Younger, and SENECA the Rhetorician.

    L. Annaei Senecae philosophi opera omnia; ex ult. I. Lipsii emendatio: et M. Annaei...

    Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, [1639–]1640.
    [With:] 
    GRONOVIUS, Joannes Fredericus. Ad L. & M. Annaeos Senecas notae....

    First Elzevir edition of the moral works and letters of the philosopher and playwright Lucius Annaeus Seneca, and the surviving Suasoriae and Controversiae of his father, known as Seneca the Rhetorician, along with the Amsterdam reprint of the extensive scholia of Johann Friedrich...

    £500

  7. [SERRÉ, Jean-Baptiste-Adrien-Joseph.]

    Livre utile aux négocians de l’Europe, contenant les réductions des argents dont ils...

    Paris, chez Valade; Brussels, chez Emmanuel Flon, 1774.

    £100

  8. [SEVILLE.]

    Mercantile contract between Sebastián de Baeza of Seville and Hernán López de Segovia, almost certainly relating...

    Seville, 25 July 1576.

    A commercial document from the heyday of Seville’s trade with the Indies. Drawn up for Sebastián de Baeza, a resident of the barrio of San Bartolomé in Seville, the document recapitulates a previous agreement of 25 June 1576 between, on the one hand, Hernán López de Segovia and, on...

    £1200

  9. [SEX-WORK.] 

    Arrêtés des 3 et 4 Juin 1833, concernant les femmes et filles livrées à la prostitution publique. 

    Toulon, ‘de l’imprimerie d’Aug. Aurel’, 1833. 

    An apparently unrecorded set of decrees intended to regulate sex-work in the French port of Toulon on the Mediterranean coast, ‘for the maintenance of good morals and public health’. 

    £475

  10. SHAGINYAN, Marietta Sergeevna.

    O blazhenstve imushchago: poeziia Z.N. Gippius [On the bliss of the propertied: the poetry of...

    Moscow, “Al’tsiona”, [1912].

    First edition, a critical essay by Shaginian published in the same year as Orientalia (advertised here), the collection of poetry that brought her fame.

    £350

  11. SHAGINYAN, Marietta Sergeevna.

    Puteshestvie v Veimar [Journey to Weimar].

    Moscow & Petrograd, Gosizdat, 1923.

    First edition of Shaginyan’s account of a pilgrimage to Weimar, presented by the author ‘to the respected Vladimir Pavlovich Pirogov in dear memory’ (trans.).

    £600

  12. [SHEPHEARD, James.]

    The Dying Speech of James Shepheard: who suffer’d Death at Tyburn, March the 17th, 1717/18. Deliver’d by...

    [London, s.n., 1718.]

    One of at least five printings of this ‘speech’ – allegedly written by the young Jacobite James Shepheard, hanged at Tyburn for planning the assassination of George I – some adding a hymn. Its inflammatory content makes it very unlikely that it was in fact delivered.

    £750

  13. SHKAPSKAIA, Maria Mikhailovna.

    Krov’-ruda [Blood-ore].

    St Petersburg & Berlin, Epokha, 1922.

    First edition of a collection of twenty-one poems by Maria Shkapskaya (1881–1952).

    £300

  14. SILIUS ITALICUS, C.; John CAREY, editor.

    Punicorum libri XVII, sedulâ recensione accurati [cover: Recensuit et...

    London, T. Davison for Rodwell & Martin, J. Booker, Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, G. & W. Whittaker, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Co., T. Cadell,...

    First and only ‘Regent’s Classics’ edition of Silius Italicus’s epic poem on the Second Punic War, an attractive copy, uncut in the publisher’s printed boards.

    £100

  15. SIMEONI, Gabriele.

    Comentarii di Gabriello Symeoni Fiorentino sopra alla tetrarchia di Vinegia, di Milano, di Mantova, et di Ferrara ...

    Venice, Comino da Trino di Monferrato, 1546.

    Scarce first edition of Gabriele Simeoni’s (1509–1575) political history of the most powerful city-states of sixteenth-century Italy – Venice, Milan, Mantua, and Ferrara – with full-page genealogical diagrams of the Visconti, Gonzaga, and d’Este families.

    £550

  16. SISMONDI, J. C. L. Simonde de.

    Nouveaux principes d’économie politique, ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population...

    Paris, Delaunay, Treuttel & Wurtz, 1819.

    First edition. ‘A number of concepts and theories that later became important in the history of economics first appeared in the writings of the Swiss economist J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi … Sismondi developed the first aggregate equilibrium income theory and the first algebraic growth model....

    £850

  17. SMITH, Albert Richard.

    The new Game of the Ascent of Mont Blanc.

    London, printed by Hall, 43, South Molton St., [c. 1855–57].

    Rare first edition of this attractive board game based on Smith’s ascent of Mont Blanc on 12 August 1851. Upon his return, Smith opened a stage show based on his experiences at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, mixing dramatic description, song, illustrations, and even St Bernard dogs. It was...

    £3750

  18. SMITH, Robert. 

    The Universal Directory for taking alive and destroying Rats, and all other Kinds of four-footed and winged Vermin,...

    London, printed for the author, 1768. 

    First edition of a guide to catching and killing all manner of crawling and flying vermin, illustrated with plates, by the professional exterminator and rat-catcher Robert Smith. 

    £500

  19. SMITH, William.

    The Speeches of Mr. Smith, of South Carolina, delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, in...

    Philadelphia printed, London reprinted for John Stockdale, 1794.

    First London edition, a rebuff to the punitive anti-British tariffs proposed by the future President James Madison, first printed in Philadelphia in the same year and also reprinted in Edinburgh.

    £175

  20. [SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICAN COINAGE.]

    The King’s Assay Master’s Report, with Tables, shewing the Weights and Fineness of the...

    [London, 1834].

    Three tables of coinage weights and fineness for Mexico, Central America, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Rio Plata and Columbia, drawn up by Robert and Henry Bingley of the Assay Office ‘to enable Government to form a correct estimate of the value of South American Dollars, as a supply for the military chests...

    £250