Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its influence on General Virtue and Happiness. London: Robinson, 1793

FIRST EDITION. In Political Justice, his most famous work, Godwin responds to Burke’s attacks on the French Revolution and Thomas Paine. He applies the principles of the Revolution to inquire into the philosophical basis of government. Believing that political and social institutions are tyrannical and corrupt, Godwin calls for reason to guide human affairs and advocates individual liberty.

$25,000

Principes du Droit Politique [Du Contract Social]. Amsterdam: Michel Rey, 1762

FIRST EDITION, type B, the definitive authorized version. Observing in his opening words that “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” Rousseau offered this work as a yardstick with which to judge existing governments. He argued that the central problem is to “find a form of association which can defend and protect with all the power of the community the person and possessions of each associate, and by which each person unites himself with all, but only obeys himself and thereby remains as free as before.”

$20,000

Some Account of the Pennsylvania Hospital; From its First Rise, to the Beginning of the Fifth Month, called May, 1754. Philadelphia: B. Franklin and D. Hall, 1754

FIRST EDITION of Benjamin Franklin’s account of the Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital established in the British colonies, co-founded by Franklin with his friend Dr. Thomas Bond. It remains a leading medical institution in Philadelphia.

$17,500

The Celestial Rail-Road. Boston: James F. Fish, 1843

$15,000

Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, life among the lowly. Boston: Jewett, 1852

FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING. “These books are of such paramount historical importance that it is difficult to evaluate them as literature” (Merle Johnson). “Three thousand copies were sold on the day of publication, and before its first anniversary, over 300,000 copies were sold in America … More than twenty London editions appeared in 1852, so the English audience must have been as large as the American. No other American novel has been translated into so many foreign languages” (Grolier/American).

$15,000

Precaution. New York: A.T. Goodrich & Co., 1820

$12,000

Autograph manuscript “On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners.”. No Place, ca. 1869

$8,250

The Historie of Twelve Caesars … newly translated into English, by Philemon Holland. London: Matthew Lowne, 1606

First edition in English of Suetonius’ dramatic biographies of the first “Twelve Caesars,” translated by Philemon Holland. This entertaining work is a principal source for one of the most eventful and scandalous periods in ancient history. Suetonius is the first biographer in Latin whose works have come down to us.

$7,500

Peter Parley’s Universal History, on the Basis of Geography. Boston: American Stationers’ Company and John B. Russell, 1837

$4,500

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948

FIRST EDITION of this classic, a book that helped usher in the sexual revolution.

$3,500