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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. MILL, John Stuart.

    A szabadságról. Fordította és az előszót írta Kállay Béni.

    Béni. Pest, Ráth Mór, 1867.

    Extremely rare (1 copy worldwide) first Hungarian edition of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. This translation, published in Pest, came out as the Habsburg Emperor accepted the consequences of a twenty-years-long strife for autonomy and rights on the part of Hungarian subjects. Mill’s anti-paternalistic...

    £975

  2. HURRY, Thomas.

    Tables of interest, from one pound to five hundred millions, for one day; by which the interest for any sum of money...

    [Yarmouth], Printed for the author, and sold by Messrs. Robinson, London; and Downes and March, Yarmouth, 1786.

    One of two editions published in 1786, the other one undated, ESTC does not give any precedence. Tables for calculating interest at a quarter, half, three-quarters, three, four, and five percent; intended as a quick reference for bankers and merchants. Hurry precedes his tables with four pages of example...

    £150

  3. UNITED STATES TARIFF COMMISSION.

    The Tariff. A Bibliography. A select list of references.

    Washington, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1934.

    First edition of a prodigiously comprehensive bibliography on tariffs, listing 6453 works in print relating to the rationale, theory, implementation, history, policies, administration, legislation, economic aspects, and controversies on tariffs. This extensive report was published in the year in which...

    £200

  4. NICHOLSON, Joseph Shield.

    Tenant’s Gain not Landlord’s Loss, and some other economic Aspects of the Land Question.

    Edinburgh, David Douglas, 1883.

    First edition. ‘The vitality of popular fallacies is remarkable, and the old mercantile notion of trade that one man’s gain is necessarily another man’s loss still prevails as regards compensation for agricultural improvements. The exposure of this and other fallacies is one of the aims of this...

    £250

  5. 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

  6. HERYNG, Zygmunt.

    Teorja i praktyka ekonomji.

    [Warsaw, G. Centnerszwer], 1897.

    First edition, very rare, of Heryng’s Theory and practice of economics. Zygmunt Heryng, Polish economist and political activist, was deeply concerned with economics as a science. He saw it as a systematic and conscious pursuit of efficiency in resource allocation in relation to targets. One of the...

    £150

  7. WALRAS, Auguste.

    Théorie de la richesse sociale ou résumé des principes fondamentaux de l’économie politique.

    Paris, Guillaumin et C.ie, 1849.

    Three first editions, including the first appearance of the work which strongly influenced the work of French mathematical economist Léon Walras (1834–1910): his father Auguste’s Theory of Social Wealth.

    £1750

  8. HICKS, J. R.

    The Theory of Wages.

    London, MacMillan and Co, 1932.

    First edition, scarce on the market, of a classic microeconomic analysis of wage determination in competitive markets.

    £200

  9. TOOKE, Thomas.

    Thoughts and Details on the high and low Prices of the last thirty Years.

    London, John Murray, 1823.

    First edition of Tooke's first work, discussing the influence of climatic conditions and changing demand on agricultural prices. ‘During the three years which followed the Resumption Act of 1819 prices of nearly all commodities decreased, and the opinion that the fall in prices was the result of the...

    £750

  10. [COLOGNE and KOBLENZ.]

    Three hotel advertising cards with lithographic city views.

    [Cologne and Koblenz, c. 1870.]

    An attractive group of advertising cards for three Rhine-front hotels in Cologne and Koblenz, each with a lithographic view of the river and city.

    £100

  11. GEE, Joshua.

    The trade and navigation of Great-Britain considered: shewing that the surest way for a nation to increase in riches,...

    London, A. Bettesworth, C. Hitch … and S. Birt, 1738.

    Fourth edition of Gee’s most important work, first published in 1729. Written at a time of declining exports, decaying agriculture and high unemployment Trade and navigation discusses foreign trade with strong protectionist tendencies. Gee is keen to improve trade with the North American colonies,...

    £250

  12. CAMPOMANES, Pedro Rodriguez (Antonio Conca y Alcaraz, translator).

    Trattato della regalia d’ammortizzazione, nel quale si dimostra,...

    Parma, Filippo Carmignani, 1767.

    First Italian translation of this influential treatise on the property rights of the Church and the state in Spain by the Spanish philosopher, economist, and historian Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes (1723-1803).

    £350

  13. [ISELIN, Isaak].

    Träume eines Menschenfreundes. Erster Theil.

    Basel, Johannes Schweighauser, 1776.

    Uncommon first edition, part one only (very rarely to be found complete with both parts), of the most mature expression of Iselin’s anti-Rousseau republicanism, a social ‘dream’ of great articulation and – arguably – applicability, residing confidently on the borderline between utopia and reformism,...

    £150

  14. LAWRENCE, William Beach.

    Two Lectures on Political Economy delivered at Clinton Hall, before the Mercantile Library Association...

    New York, G. & C & H. Carvill, 1832. 

    First edition, uncommon. The author, an American jurist and politician, was the son of Isaac Lawrence, President of the New York Branch of the Bank of the United States and a Presidential Elector. In his Lectures Lawrence deplored speculation as the mechanism which gives rise to boom-and-bust...

    £450

  15. [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

  16. RICARDO, David.

    Zasady ekonomji politycznej i podatkowania.

    Warsaw, Jan Cotty, 1919.

    Second and most complete Polish edition of On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (first published in 1817), in a new translation by Dr. M. Bronstein. The 1826 first Polish translation by Stanislaw Kunatt was based on the translation into French by the Portuguese journalist Francisco Solano...

    £150