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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[CUMBERLAND, Richard.]
Arundel. By the author of the Observer.
London, Printed for C. Dilly … 1789.
First edition. Richard Cumberland (1732–1811) was the grandson of the great scholar Richard Bentley, and great-grandson of the Bishop of Peterborough; he had already made his name as a playwright in London, and was also the author of a periodical paper the Observer when he published this,...
£1500
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MYRDAL, Gunnar.
Asian Drama. An inquiry into the poverty of nations.
New York, Pantheon, 1968.
Third printing, published in the same year as the first edition, of this important study which took ten years to complete.
£65
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[DELAMARCHE, Alexandre, cartographer; Bernard COUDERT, lithographer.]
‘Atlas’.
Paris, Legay, [c. 1889].
An attractive set of large educational jigsaw maps showing the world, Europe, and France, preserved in its original allegorical box.
£875
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ARMINESI, Rocco degli.
Attila flagelum Dei, tradotto dalla vera cronica per Rocco degli Arminesi padovano. Ove si narra come detto...
Venice, Omobon Bettanino, [mid-eighteenth century].
Very rare eighteenth-century edition of a popular and best-selling poem on Attila the Hun.
£600
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PALMERSTON, Henry John Temple, Viscount.
Autograph document signed, approving a plan for a ‘Prison for Boys’ at Durham...
Whitehall, 2 February 1853.
A document signed by Lord Palmerston as Home Secretary. He signifies his approval of ‘the annexed plan [no longer present] of a Prison for Boys, on the upper floor of the South Wing of the Gaol for the County of Durham’.
£400
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DISRAELI, Benjamin.
Autograph envelope signed.
[Probably London, c. 1874–1880.]
An envelope probably dating from Disraeli’s second premiership (1874–1880). Lady Emily Peel (1836–1924) was the seventh daughter of the eighth marquess of Tweeddale. Lady Emily Hay, as she then was, married the politician Sir Robert Peel, third baronet, on 13 January 1856, but she left her husband...
£100
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LIEBER, Francis.
Autograph letter in French, signed ‘François Lieber’, to Joseph Bonaparte, comte de Survilliers, Napoleon’s...
Columbia, South Carolina, 9 May 1836.
The German-American political scientist Francis Lieber (1800–1872) was a prolific theorist of political ethics and jurisprudence. He emigrated to Boston in 1827, where he impressed John Quincy Adams, and became Tocqueville’s principal informant for Democracy in America (1835–40). In 1835 he was...
£425
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HUSKISSON, William (1770-1830), politician.
Autograph letter signed (‘W Huskisson’) to an unnamed ‘Dear Sir’.
18 Hertford Street [London], 21 December, 1810.
Huskisson was a leading exponent of strict adherence to the Gold standard and an opponent of the perceived over-issue of bank notes in the early nineteenth century. This letter was written only a few months after Huskisson had published his important pamphlet, The question concerning the depreciation...
£150
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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
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RHOADS, James Evans.
Autograph letter signed (‘James E. Rhoads’) to Henry Horniman.
Philadelphia, 22 July 1869.
A letter from the first president of Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia. Rhoads (1828–1895) helped establish the college as a nondenominational, internationally respected school, and the first higher education institution to offer graduate degrees to women.
£100
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LIEBIG, Justus von.
Autograph letter, signed, to an unnamed English nobleman.
Munich, 10 December 1857.
A fine letter from Justus von Liebig to an unnamed English nobleman.
£1250
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JEROME, Jerome Klapka.
Autograph letter, signed, to W. B. Forster Bovill.
Brussels, Wiltcher’s Hotel, 11 May 1904.
A very good letter in which Jerome K. Jerome expresses his great admiration for the South African novelist and suffragist Olive Schreiner (1855–1920).
£500
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BEAUMONT, Gustave-Auguste de la Bonninière de.
Autograph letter signed (‘Gustave de Beaumont’) to Sarah Austin.
Birmingham, 27 June [1835].
A warm and personal autograph documenting the relationship between Beaumont (1802–1866), prison reformer and travel companion to Alexis de Tocqueville, and one of the most accomplished contemporary catalysts of philosophical exchange, the translator Sarah Austin.
£350
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LONGFELLOW, Henry Wadsworth.
Autograph letter, signed ‘Henry W. Longfellow’, to ‘Lady Emily’.
Ouchy, 16 September 1868.
Addressed to ‘Lady Emily’, Longfellow here expresses his regret at not being able to see her at Sécheron while he was staying at Geneva, and apologises also for not being able to return to Geneva ‘to accept your hospitable invitation. We go tomorrow to Yverdon, and thence through Neuchâtel, and...
£450
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BENTHAM, William, barrister and numismatist.
Autograph letter to the bookseller Lackington.
Upper Gower Street [London], 25 August 1819.
Writing in the third person, Bentham requests that he be sent the ‘Supplemt of Mr Ruding’s Coins intended for the purchasers of the quarto edn’. Rogers Ruding (1751-1820) published his Annals of the Coinage, a chronological account of English coinage, in four quarto volumes in 1817. It sold out...
£100
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MEADE, James Edward (1907-1995), economist.
Autograph manuscript page and accompanying black and white passport photograph.
[c. 1977].
A leaf of autograph manuscript, presumably sent at the request of a collector, giving part of the text of Meade’s Nobel Memorial Lecture, ‘The meaning of “internal balance”’, which he delivered in December 1977. Meade writes: ‘To treat the whole of macro-economic control as a single subject...
£150
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CHERUBINI, Luigi.
Autograph note signed ‘L. Cherubini’ regarding the cellist Auguste Franchomme.
[Paris,] 19 December 1825.
A short note in which the composer and director of the Conservatoire de Paris Luigi Cherubini records that ‘Mr. Franchomme’ has been admitted into the class of ‘Mr. Seuriot’ and that he will begin there on 22 December 1825.
£350
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[LE GUERCHOIS, Madeleine d’Aguesseau, Madame.]
Avis d’une mere a son fils.
Paris, Desaint & Saillant, 1743.
A popular work of matrimonial advice, in a simple vellum binding richly decorated by the master calligrapher Francois Nicolas Bédigis (1738–1814).
£2750
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HARLINGUE, L. [Albert].
'Baktiaris Persans'.
[Iran, c. 1905-1911].
An impressive press image of the Bakhtiari tribe – revolutionaries in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911 – here posing in strength with their weapons. Their leader, Sardar As’ad Bakhtiari (1856-1917), was a key figure in the Iranian revolution; under his command (and with German...
£1500
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[GOLD and SILVER.]
Bando generale per gli orefici, argentieri, ed altri che comprano, vendono, ed in qualsivoglia modo...
Rome, ‘nella stamperia della Rev. Camera Apostolica’, 1815.
Rare edict governing goldsmiths, silversmiths, and traders in gold and silver operating in Rome and the Papal States, issued by Cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca (1756–1844) in January 1815 as Camerlengo to Pope Pius VII.
£475