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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. BODEMER, Heinrich.

    Die Wirkungen der Creditpapiere in Bezug die Vehmehrung der Banken in Deutschland.

    Leipzig, Heinrich Hubner, 1853.

    First edition of a rare German treatise on banking, money, paper money and credit. Bodemer argues for a bettering and widening of credit in Prussia at a crucial time of its economic development, where both production and trade required ever more more advanced, unified and modern financial tools.

    £125

  2. BOETHIUS; [Pseudo-] Thomas AQUINAS, commentator.

    De consolatione philosophie liber cum optimo commento beati Thome.

    [(Colophon:) Deventer, Jacobus de Breda, 19 March 1491.]

    Uncommon Deventer edition of Boethius’s famous Consolation of Philosophy, along with the spuriously attributed treatise of advice for scholars.

    £12000

  3. BOETHIUS; Richard GRAHAM, Viscount Preston, translator.

    Of the Consolation of Philosophy. In five Books. Made English...

    London, J. D. for Awnsham and John Churchill, and Francis Hildyard, York, 1695.

    First edition of this translation by the diplomat, politician and Jacobite conspirator Richard Graham, 1st Viscount Preston (1648–1695).

    £950

  4. [BOIS, Paul.]

    La vie des premieres religieuses Capucines du monastere de Marseille.

    Marseille, de l’imprimerie de Dominique Sibié, 1754.

    Scarce first edition of a compendium of the lives of thirteen Capuchin nuns associated with Marseille, attributed to Paul Bois (1685–1763), curate of nearby Noyers-sur-Jabron, with a woodcut frontispiece depicting a nun before an altar.

    £375

  5. BOLAÑO, Roberto.

    2666.

    Barcelona, Editorial Anagrama, [2004].

    First edition of the Chilean writer’s last novel, the major preoccupation of the last five years of his life.

    £500

  6. [BOLINGBROKE, Henry St John, Viscount].

    Letters, on the Spirit of Patriotism: on the Idea of a Patriot King: and on the State of...

    London: Printed for A. Millar … 1749.

    First authorised edition. Written in 1738 for the Prince of Wales, the manuscript was then entrusted to Pope who had it printed, to Bolingbroke’s fury: he bought up the entire edition and had it burnt in October 1744 (only two imperfect copies survive, at the British Library and Princeton). He later...

    £375

  7. BONAPARTE, Jerôme-Napoléon.

    Letter signed as governor of Les Invalides to the members of the Conseil d’administration de la...

    Paris, Hôtel des Invalides, 16 February 1849.

    Jérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte (1784–1860) was the youngest brother of Napoleon I and reigned as Jerome Napoleon I, King of Westphalia, between 1807 and 1813. He became governor of Les Invalides when his nephew Prince Louis Napoleon became president of the second French Republic in 1848.

    £300

  8. [BOOKBINDER.]

    Sentence rendue en la chambre criminelle du Châtelet de Paris, qui condamne Guillaume Maillet, maître relieur,...

    Paris, Jean-Charles Desaint, 1782.

    Scarce pamphlet documenting the misdemeanours of the Parisian master bookbinder Guillaume Maillet.

    £575

  9. BOSE, Johann Andreas.

    Io. Andr. Bosii introductio generalis in notitiam rerumpublicarum orbis universi. Accedunt eiusdem dissertationes...

    Jenae, Johann Bielke, 1676.

    First edition of a pioneering work of statistics and rare Americanum, by the philosopher and historian Johann Andreas Bose (1624–1674).

    £1500

  10. BOSWELL, James.

    A Letter to the People of Scotland, on the alarming Attempt to infringe the Articles of Union, and introduce a...

    London, Charles Dilly, 1785.

    First edition of Boswell’s second Letter to the People of Scotland, written to oppose a bill in Parliament for reducing the number of the Lords of Session from fifteen to ten.

    £1500

  11. [BOUCHET, Jean.]

    Les triu[m]phes de la noble et amoureuse dame, et l’art de honnestement aymer, compose par le Traverseur des...

    Paris, Estienne Caveiller for Pierre Sergent, 6 June 1539.

    Unrecorded issue of Jean Bouchet’s contemplative vernacular work of moral theology in prose and verse explicitly intended for a female readership, following the personified Soul in dialogue with several virtues as she attempts to combat the forces of earthly temptation with the power of divine grace,...

    £4500

  12. [BOUDIER DE VILLEMERT, Pierre-Joseph.]

    L’Andrometrie, ou examen philosophique de l’homme. Par Monsieur l’Abbé de Villemaire.

    Paris, chez Brunet, 1753.

    First editions of two scarce works by the philosopher, moralist, and Parisian avocat Boudier de Villemert (1716–1801), best known as the author of L’Ami des Femmes, Le monde joué involving visits from extra-terrestrials both in ancient times and in the eighteenth century.

    £2500

  13. [BOUDIER DE VILLEMERT, Pierre-Joseph.]

    L’ami des femmes.

    Paris, ‘Quay des Augustins’, 1759.

    Uncommon early edition, printed a year after the first, of Boudier de Villemert’s most famous work, a courtesy book for women discussing education and the place of woman within society.

    £300

  14. [BOUTREUX D’ESTIAU, Jacques de.]

    De la puissance roialle sur la police de l’Eglise.

    Paris, Pierre Durand, 1625.

    A pair of uncommon works defending the French king’s authority over the Church, in a binding for Jacques-Auguste II de Thou and later in the renowned Caumartin library.

    £950

  15. [BRISTOL.] 

    The Bristol Contest, being a Collection of all the Papers published by both Parties, on the Election, 1754. 

    Bristol, ‘sold by the Printing-Office … and by J. Palmer’, [1754]. 

    Extremely rare first edition of this Bristol-printed political pamphlet, bound with the first edition of a French work on pyrotechnics used both for spectacle and for war. 

    £650

  16. BROGGI, Ugo.

    Die Axiome der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung.

    Göttingen, Dieterischen Universitäts-Buchdruckerei, 1907.

    Rare first edition of this doctoral dissertation on the solution of Hilbert’s sixth problem, written under the supervision of David Hilbert.

    £200

  17. BROOKLYN ETHICAL ASSOCIATION.

    [Cover title: Evolution]. Man and the State. Studies in applied sociology. Popular lectures...

    [N.p., n.d., n.d.].

    First edition of this broadly political collection of essays on economics, race relations, the Democratic and Republican parties, and suffrage, inter alia, likely from the library of a Californian senator.

    £150

  18. BROUGHAM, Lord Henry.

    Lives of men of letters and science who flourished in the time of George III … with portraits, engraved...

    London, Charles Knight and Co., 1845-47.

    First edition of the first volume (1845), later edition of the second volume (dated 1847, first published 1846) of Brougham’s lives which includes Voltaire, Hume, Davy, Johnson, and Adam Smith to name a few stars in the firmament of the reign of George III, or, in Brougham’s terms, the ‘Augustan...

    £125

  19. BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett.

    Poems before Congress …

    London, [Bradbury and Evans for] Chapman and Hall, 1860.

    First edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s slender collection of seven poems on the cause of Italian independence, and one attacking slavery in the United States (‘A Curse for a Nation’), published a year before her death.

    £200

  20. [BUNBURY, Henry William.] ‘GAMBADO, Geoffrey’.

    Annals of Horsemanship, containing Accounts of accidental Experiments and experimental...

    London, W. Nicholson for W. Baynes, 1808.

    Third edition of Bunbury’s satirical work with humorous etchings. First published in 1791 and often presented as a continuation of Bunbury’s Academy for grown Horsemen (published in 1784 also under the name Gambado), the Annals of Horsemanship is a parody of Arthur Young’s Annals...

    £475