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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[MALTHUS, Thomas Robert].
Art. I - Essay on Political Economy. Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. VI. Part I. Edinburgh....
The Quarterly Review Vol. XXX No. LX, January 1824, pp. 298-334.
First edition. A review by Thomas Malthus of John Ramsay McCulloch’s famous essay on political economy.
£100
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MALTHUS, Thomas Robert.
An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a View of its past and present Effects on human Happiness;...
London, Johnson, 1803.
Second edition, first published 1798. Called the ‘Great Quarto’, it is the first to bear Malthus’s name and is so revised by Malthus as to be ‘regarded by [him] as a substantially new work’ (ODNB).
£5750
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MALTHUS, T. R.
Principles of political Economy considered with a View to their practical Application.
London, John Murray, 1820.
First edition of Malthus’s broadest treatment of issues in political economy, an attractive copy from the library of the economist and industrialist Robert Hyde Greg, a critic of Malthus’s.
£5000
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MALTHUS, T. R.
An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a View of its past and present Effects on human Happiness; with an...
London, John Murray, 1817.
Fifth edition, ‘with important additions’, of one of the most influential works in the history of economic thought, a handsome copy owned and possibly annotated by the economist and industrialist Robert Hyde Greg, a critic of Malthus’s.
£2200
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MANDEVILLE, Bernard.
The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, public Benefits. Edited and with an Introduction by Douglas Garman.
London, Wishart and Co., 1934.
First edition thus. Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees was first published as a poem in 1705, entitled The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turned Honest, which is printed in this edition as first text, and later expanded into a prose work entitled The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices,...
£190
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[MARABOTTA, Cattaneo.]
Vita della serafica S. Caterina da Genova.
Genoa, Tipografia Frugoni, 1832.
Rare first edition thus, an attractive nineteenth-century reprint of Marabotta’s biography of Saint Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510), first published in 1737, the date of her canonisation. Catherine was known for her writings on mysticism and for her work with the poor and sick, notably during...
£185
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[MARIA THERESA.]
Sammelband of twenty-three works, including two broadsides, published on the death of Maria Theresa of Austria.
[Naples, 1781.]
An extraordinary sammelband gathering eulogies and epigraphs to Maria Theresa of Austria, including several ephemeral pieces and broadsides and displaying the breadth of southern Italian typography in the late eighteenth century.
£1950
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MARSILIUS of Inghen, GILES of Rome, and ALBERT of Saxony.
Marsilii de genera[tione et corruptione]. Commentaria fidelissimi...
[(Colophon:) Venice, [Boneto Locatello for] the heirs and partners of Ottaviano Scoto, 19 June 1520.]
A trio of late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century commentaries on Aristotle’s books on generation and corruption, composed at the University of Paris by Giles of Rome, Marsilius of Inghen, and Albert of Saxony, demonstrating the international nature of medieval scholarship.
£1500
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[MARTINI, Ferdinand].
Breife. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt.
Soröe 1768, gedruckt bey Jonas Lindgreen, Ritterlich Akademischer Buchdrucker.
First edition of a rare, radical indictment of serfdom in Denmark, ostensibly ‘translated from the English’.
£750
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MARZAGLIA, Gaetano.
Fascetto di pratiche matematiche spiegate alle persone popolari per uso del comercio umano, e civile, in questa...
Verona, Dionisio Ramanzini, 1780.
A lovely copy of the second edition, considerably augmented from the first of 1754, of this book of applied mathematical problems by the Veronese mathematician Gaetano Marzaglia (or Marcegaglia, 1716–1787), heavily influenced by the work of Wolff, who provides the motto to the book, and whose works...
£650
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[MASCHERANA, Girolamo.]
Concordia tra la società e la religione ossia Difesa del culto cattolico contro chi lo calunnia in contrasto...
Milan, Cesare Orena nella stamperia Malatesta, 1798.
Rare second edition, printed in the same year as the equally rare first, of this curious defence of religion in the light of the constitution of the Cisalpine Republic, in which the author seeks to demonstrate the compatibility of Catholicism with the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution and...
£375
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MASTAI FERRETTI, Conte Paolino.
Notizie storiche delle accademie d’Europa, con una relazione piu’ diffusa dell’accademia...
Rome, I Lazzarini, 1792.
Only edition, and a lovely copy, of this finely printed history of the academies of Europe, produced in honour of Pope Pius VI’s reestablishment of, and support for the Accademia nobile ecclesiastica (now the Pontifical Ecclesiastic Academy), which had been founded in 1701, was suppressed in 1764,...
£850
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MAURIZI, Maria Luisa.
Morali e divote riflessioni a tutti utilissime e specialmente alle persone claustrali scritte dalla serva...
Rome, Tipografia della Pia Unione alle Terme, 1833.
Uncommon first edition of this collection of meditations on the religious life, by the Roman nun Maria Luisa Maurizi (born Giacinta Gertrude Maurizi, 1770–1831), and published posthumously at the behest of her spiritual director, Agostino Romagnoli.
£150
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MCCULLOCH, John Ramsay.
Principes d’économie politique suivis de quelques recherches relatives à leur application et d’un...
Paris, Guillaumin et Cie, 1851.
First and only complete French translation, an association copy signed by the translator for the historian and member of the Académie française Pierre-François Tissot, and afterwards in the library of the economist and statist Michel Chevalier, who like Tissot held a chair at the Collège de France.
£300
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McCULLOCH, John Ramsay, and Augustin PLANCHE (translator).
Principes d’économie politique, suivis de quelques recherches relatives...
Paris, A. Moussin for Guillaumin et Cie, 1863.
French translation of McCulloch’s Principles. First published in 1825, the book provided the first synthetic modern definition of political economy and quickly established itself as one of the most referenced manuals on the subject. ‘For McCulloch was reserved the honour of presenting in a popular...
£200
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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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MEAD, Richard.
A Short Discourse concerning pestilential Contagion, and the Methods to be used to prevent it … The third Edition.
London, printed [by William Bowyer] for Sam. Buckley … and Ralph Smith … 1720.
‘Third edition’ of the most famous medical tract on the plague scare of 1720–1, written at the request of James Craggs, the secretary of State, following the bubonic outbreak in Marseilles in late 1719.
£375
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[MEDICAL DICTIONARY.]
Dictionary of medical terms, Latin-English wordlist, and list of abbreviations and contractions.
[S.l., early 1800s].
An interesting manuscript compiled by an anonymous medical student, comprising a dictionary of medical terms, from ‘Abdomen’ to ‘Zoster’, followed by a glossary of Latin terms with their English equivalents (including ‘Machina electrica – the electric machine’), and ending with a...
£450
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MEGUSCHER, Francesco.
Memoria … in risposta al quesito additare la migliore e più facile maniera per rimittere i boschi nelle...
Milan, presso l’I.R. Istituto, 1847.
Uncommon first edition of this comprehensive report on the best means of reversing the deforestation of the mountains of Lombardy in a way that would be both environmentally sustainable and economically profitable.
£950
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MELECRINIS, Maria Teresa.
Le voci del cuore a Maria Teresa Melecrinis dei baroni di Ioppolo e Coccorino che a di 6 luglio 1846...
Naples, stamperia dell' Iride, 1846.
Very rare collection of odes and sonnets composed to mark the entry of Maria Teresa Melecrinis into the Benedictine monastery of San Paolo at Sorrento.
£175