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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. [THORNTON, Robert John].

    The Politician’s Creed. Being the Great Outline of Political Science. From the Writings of Montesquieu,...

    London, printed for T. Cox, and sold by Johnson, Robinsons, Owen, and Manson, 1795-6.

    First editions of The Politician’s Creed, by the physician and writer on botany Robert John Thornton (1767-1837). Written as a fundraiser for war widows and orphans, this comprehensive work examines politics as a science, different forms of government and popular responses to them, corruption, the...

    £200

  2. TOMPSON, John, editor.

    English Miscellanies consisting of various Pieces of Divinity, Morals, Politicks, Philosophy and History;...

    Gottingen by Abram. Vandenhoeck, Printer and Bookseller to the University 1746.

    Second edition, revised, of John Tompson’s important English Miscellanies, expanded to almost twice the size of the first edition, including up-to-date content published since 1737.

    £300

  3. [TOYNBEE, Arnold.]

    “Progress and poverty,” a criticism of Mr. Henry George. Being two lectures delivered in St. Andrew’s...

    London, Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1883.

    First edition of the transcript of two lectures delivered in 1883 by the social reformer and political economist Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) criticising Henry George’s Progress and Poverty (1879).

    £50

  4. [TREASON TRIALS.]

    The Tryals of Robert Charnock, Edward King, and Thomas Keyes, for the horrid and execrable Conspiracy to assassinate...

    London, Printed for Samuel Heyrick … and Isaac Cleave … 1696.

    First editions of the trials of the Jacobite conspirators convicted in March and April 1696 in connection with a plot to assassinate William III near Turnham Green in February that year, and to encourage a French invasion to restore James II to the throne.

    £1800

  5. [TREATIES.]

    Volume of tracts on European treaties of peace and alliance.

    Vienna and Amsterdam, 1725-1731.

    A collection of scarce texts relating to the Peace of Vienna (1725) and subsequent treaties of Hanover (1725), Paris (1727), Seville (1729), and Vienna (1731), with contemporary manuscript additions in Italian and French clearly composed by someone in diplomatic service. The collection eloquently attests...

    £1750

  6. TUGAN-BARANOSKIĬ, M. I.

    Sovremennyĭ sotsializm v svoem istoricheskom razvitii.

    St. Petersburg, Buduschnost’, 1906.

    First edition of Tugan-Baranoskiĭ’s work on socialism; it was translated into English as Modern Socialism in its Historical Development by M. I. Redmount and published in 1910. After dismissal from his position at the University of St. Petersburg in 1899 for ‘political unreliability’, Tugan-Baranoskiĭ...

    £350

  7. TUGAN-BARANOVSKII, Mikhail Ivanovich.

    Russkaia fabrika v proshlom’ i nastoiashchem’ [The Russian factory in the past and present].

    St Petersburg, L. F. Pantelev, 1898.

    First edition thus, originally issued as the author’s doctoral dissertation in 1894, a historic-economic analysis of Russian factories up to the 19th century. Beginning with a long introductory chapter on the 18th century, the work analyses factory development before and after the emancipation of the...

    £850

  8. TUGAN-BARANOVSKII, Mikhail Ivanovich.

    Teoreticheskiia osnovyi Marksizma.

    St Petersburg, I. N. Skorokhodov, 1905.

    First Russian edition of Theoretical Foundations of Marxism; a German edition, Theoretische Grundlagen der Marxismus, was published in the same year.

    £750

  9. TUGAN-BARANOVSKII, Mikhail Ivanovich.

    Величайшая въ мірѣ коммунистическая организація...

    Moscow, Vserossiiskii Tsentral’nii Coiuz Potrebitel’nykh Obshchestv’, 1918.

    Rare Russian language tract on ‘The Greatest Communist Society in the World (Doukhobor Society),’ which left Russia for Canada in 1898-9, aided by Leo Tolstoy.

    £250

  10. TUGAN-BARANOVSKI, Mikhail Ivanovich.

    Obshchestvennoe ekonomicheskie idealyi nashego vremeni

    Saint Petersburg, Izdatelstvo ‘Vestniks Znaniya’ V.V. Bitner, 1913 .

    First and only edition of Socio-Economic Ideals in Our Time, seemingly never translated into English.

    £850

  11. VALERIANI MOLINARI, Luigi.

    Discorsi concernenti la pubblica economia il gius pubblico e l’antico gius romano.

    Bologna, Masi, 1809.

    First edition of Valeriani’s (1758–1828) rare work of political economy presented as a science which stands as an organic complement to a nation’s set of legislation.

    £750

  12. VERTAMONT, Abbé de, attributed.

    L’Ombre du feu Cardinal: or, Cardinal Fleury’s Ghost. Translated from the original...

    Milles … and the Booksellers of London and Westminster. 1743.

    First edition, ostensibly translated from a manuscript rescued by an Officer of the Guards at the Bastille, but in fact an original English thrust at French foreign policy following the death of Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury, the able chief minister of Louis XV and political ally of Sir Robert Walpole.

    £350

  13. WARD, Colin.

    Anarchy in Action.

    London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1973.

    First edition. Separating the notion of anarchism from industrial and political struggles, Ward seeks its root in everyday experience. ‘The argument of this book is that an anarchist society, a society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the snow, buried...

    £190

  14. WAYLAND, Francis.

    The Elements of political Economy.

    New York, Leavitt, Lord & Company, 1837. 

    First edition of an important work long held as the leading principal economics text in American colleges. Wayland (1796–1865) was for twenty-eight years president of Brown University. ‘His notions of political economy and philanthropy dictated that the most important obligations of the state were...

    £500

  15. WEBER, Max.

    Der Sozialismus.

    Vienna, Phobus, Pimmer, 1918.

    First edition of Weber’s early and influential lecture articulating the author’s sceptical view on socialism.

    £300

  16. [WESTMINSTER ELECTION.]

    A True and impartial Collection of Pieces, in Prose and Verse, which have been written and published on...

    London: Printed for W. Owen … 1749.

    First edition of a compilation of open letters to the electorate of Westminster, written during the violent 1749 election campaign.

    £750

  17. WHITTAKER, Roger, and Natalie WHITTAKER.

    So far, so good. The autobiography of a wandering Minstrel.

    London, Colombus Books, 1986.

    Limited edition, copy no. 9 (of an unspecified number), in a special binding, inscribed ‘To Mom & Dad with all our love Roger x’.

    £250

  18. WOOLF, Leonard.

    Socialism and Co-Operation.

    London, National Labour Press, 1921.

    First edition. In the interwar period Woolf was ‘a patient and committed advocate for a cooperative model of participatory, rank-and-file democracy founded on the organization and practices of the Co-operative Movement, whose socialist, transformative aspirations Woolf found most fully realized in...

    £180

  19. ZECH, Franz Xaver.

    Hierarchia ecclesiastica, ad Germaniae Catholicae principia et usum delineata.

    Ingolstadt, Schleig, 1750.

    First edition of a comprehensive exposition of the prerogatives, duties, jurisdiction, authority and responsibilities of the secular and regular German Catholic clergy. Forty tituli set out the legal profiles and relative hierarchy of pope, patriarchs, cardinals, envoys, bishops, canons, members of religious...

    £175