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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SPENCER, Herbert.
The Study of Sociology. [The International Scientific Series].
New York, Appleton, 1874.
First edition thus, the first American appearance of the sociological portion of Spencer’s ‘philosophical system’, which commenced in 1860, and thus the first appearance in America of his foundational system of sociology, which unified Darwinian evolution and social science, famous for introducing...
£100
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SPILBERGEN, Joris van, and Jacob LE MAIRE.
Speculum orientalis occidentalisque Indiae navigationum; quarum una Georgii a...
Leiden, Nicolaes van Geelkercken, 1619.
First Latin edition of one of the classic Dutch illustrated voyages, identical in format and illustration to the same publisher’s Dutch-language edition of the same year.
£20000
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SSYL’NYM I ZAKLIUCHENNYM.
St. Petersburg, [Vol’naia Tipografiia for “Shipovnik”], 1907.
Rare first edition of this anthology of stories, novellas and poems by Russian authors; a publication intended to raise funds in support of the exiled and imprisoned (as the title translates), the victims of the Tsarist reaction after the 1905 revolution. Among the mainly socially oriented and neo-realistic...
£350
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STACEY, George et al.
Daguerreotype and ambrotype portraits of Stacey and members of his family.
London, 1850s.
A handsome set of photographs of the English Quaker and abolitionist George Stacey (1787-1857), his second wife Mary née Barclay (1797-1876) and members of their extended family, taken by some of the finest portraitists in England at that time.
£7500
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[STANHOPE, Hester Lucy, Lady.] [MERYON, Charles Lewis, editor.]
Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope, as related by...
London, [Frederick Shoberl for] Henry Colburn … 1845.
First edition, the entertaining memoirs of the Middle East traveller Lady Hester Stanhope (1776–1839). Having looked after her uncle, William Pitt, during most of her youth and run his household while he was Prime Minister for the second time, Stanhope left for the Levant in 1810. She took with...
£650
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STATUTA COLLEGII DD.
Almae Urbis Medicorum ex antiquis Romanorum Pontificum bullis congesta, & hactenùs per Sedem Apostolicam...
Rome, Printer of the Apostolic Chamber, 1676 [– c.1745].
The very rare enlarged and updated issue of the statutes of the medical faculty of Rome, a very rare and interesting document on its internal organization.
£550
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STAUNFORD [Stanford], William, Sir.
Les Plees del Coron, Divisees in Plusors Titles & Comon Lieux. Per Queux Home Pluis Redement...
[London], Richard Tottell, 1583.
The definitive edition, and that owned by Thomas Jefferson, of the first book devoted entirely to criminal law. First published posthumously in 1557 and based on Bracton and the Year Books, Les Plees deals in turn with offences, jurisdiction, appeals, indictments and defences. The third...
£2500
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STEPNIAK, Sergey.
דאָס אינטערערדישע רוסלאַנד … איבערזעצט פון א. פרומקין
[Dos...New York, Maks N. Maisel, 1921.
Scarce first American edition in Yiddish of Stepniak’s first and most influential book. Written in Italian during exile in Switzerland following his assassination of Nikolai Mezentsov, chief of Alexander II’s secret police, Underground Russia was published in 1882 and translated into...
£150
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STEPNIAK, Sergius [pseudonym for: Sergius Mikhailovich Kravchinskii].
Podziemna Rosja. Obrazki z przeszłości młodej Rosji.
Lviv, [ printers of the Dziennika Polskiego] for Gubrinowicz & Schmidt, 1897.
Extremely rare first edition in Polish, anonymously translated and printed in nowadays Ukraine, of Stepniak’s most successful, translated and influential book.
£100
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STETSON, Charlotte Perkins [later GILMAN].
Women and Economics: A Study of the economic Relation between Men and Women as...
London and Boston, G. P. Putnam’s Sons and Small, Maynard & Company, 1900.
Third edition, first published in 1898, of the best-known and most influential work of the prominent American feminist, sociologist, and novelist Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
£95
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STEWART, Dugald.
Esquisses de philosophie morale …
Paris, A. Johanneau, 1826.
First edition in French of Stewart’s Outlines of Moral Philosophy (1793), translated from the fourth English edition of 1818, with a 152-page prefatory essay by the translator, Théodore-Simon Jouffroy.
£100
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STOURM, Auguste-African, dit Eugène.
Opinion sur la question des sucres.
[Paris, Bourgogne & Martinet, n. d., but 1840.]
First and only edition of this work on the sugar beet trade; the French had begun cultivating sugar beet during the Napoleonic wars, when the British blocked shipments of cane sugar from colonies such as Martinique and Guadeloupe.
£100
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[STRASBOURG.]
Souscription patriotique de la part du beau-sexe de Strasbourg.
[S.l., s.n., 1789?.]
Rare first edition of this entertaining satirical piece on women's clothing, published in the aftermath of the French Revolution. After complaining that the recent craze for ‘gauze, muslin, linen and feathers’ had brought the country to its knees, the text describes how the patriotic women...
£165
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STRYPE, John.
The Life of the learned Sir John Cheke, Kt., first Instructer, afterwards Secretary of State, to King Edward VI.,...
London, John Wyat, 1705.
First edition of Strype’s biography of the courtier and classicist Sir John Cheke, inaugural Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge.
£450
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STUART, Gilbert.
Observations concerning the public law, and the constitutional history of Scotland: with occasional remarks concerning...
Edinburgh, printed for William Creech and J. Murray, London, 1779.
First edition. At the time of the publication of these Observations, Gilbert Stuart (1742–1786), a prolific reviewer, sometime reader for John Murray, co-founder of the short-lived Edinburgh Magazine, and author of various historical works, was a candidate for the professorship of public law in the...
£150
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SUETONIUS Tranquillus, Gaius, and HERODIAN OF ANTIOCH.
Vita di duodeci imperatori… nuovamente tradotta in volgare. Historia...
Venice, Venturino di Rossinelli [for Curzio Navò], 1539.
Annotated copy of a scarce edition of this early Italian translation of Suetonius and Herodianus, two works of ancient history which explore the lives and deeds of Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian, and from Commodus to the Year of the Six Emperors in 238. The translator of this vernacular...
£1250
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SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, Caius.
[De XII Caesarum vitis. De Illustribus grammaticis. De Claris rhetoribus. Horatii vita. Plinii vita....
Paris, Typographia Regia, 1644.
An attractive, illustrated pocket Suetonius. Quoting the pioneering early eighteenth-century bookseller Guillaume de Bure, Cookman notes that this edition is ‘recherché a cause de la beauté de son impression’.
£350
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[SUEZ CANAL.]
Vade-mecum des porteurs de Suez. Extrait du numéro du 4 mars 1882 du Courrier des Tirages financiers. Propriété...
. Paris, [1882].
Scarce pamphlet, signed ‘J. R.’, advising investors in the Suez Canal – referred to as ‘capitalistes intelligents’ – on the likely return on their investments over the coming 10 years.
£50
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[SWEDIAUER, Franz Xavier].
The Philosophical dictionary: or the opinions of modern philosophers on metaphysical, moral and political...
London, for G.G.J. and J Robinson, 1786.
First edition of this philosophical dictionary, featuring extracts from ‘the writings of the most eminent philosophers in Europe’ (preface) chosen by Swediaur, who originally compiled the collection as a sort of commonplace book for his private use. The broad-reaching content includes contributions...
£200
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ŚWIATŁO.
Czasopismo popularno-naukowe. Organ Polskiej Partyi Socyalistycznej. Rok pierwszy [- drugi].
London, Printers of the Federation of Polish Socialists Abroad for the Polish Socialist Party [– Printers of the Polish Socialist Party],...
The first two complete years (eight consecutive issues) of the very rare quarterly magazine of the PPS, the largest Socialist Party of Poland, lead by Piłsudski. Altogether 19 issues appeared up to 1904. The annual titles, which are apparently not always present were designed by Teofil Terlecki...
£200