THE FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH OF DAS KAPITAL
MARX, Karl.
Capital. A critical analysis of capitalist production … translated from the third edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and edited by Frederick Engels.
London, Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., 1887.
Two vols, 8vo, continuously paginated, pp. xxxi, [1, blank], 363, [1, blank]; [ii], [365]–816; a few gatherings in each volume uncut; sporadic foxing, textblock a little loose in places, but withal a very good and entirely unsophisticated copy; bound in the original publisher’s red cloth, spines lettered and ruled in gilt, covers panelled in blind; spines a little sunned, corners and spine ends a little bumped, hinges solid (unlike in most copies), a couple of minor marks.
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Capital. A critical analysis of capitalist production … translated from the third edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and edited by Frederick Engels.
A remarkably well preserved copy of the first edition in English of Marx’s Das Kapital, translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and published in London four years after Marx’s death under the editorship of Engels. ‘Aveling was the husband of Marx’s youngest daugher, Eleanor, and Moore an old friend, an unwilling businessman (like Engels), who later turned to the law and ended as a magistrate in Nigeria.’ (PMM). This edition comprised Book I only, with the English translation of Book II and III following only in 1907 and 1909 respectively. Despite the German edition of Book II being available in 1885, Engels, in his preface to this translation, explained that he deliberately held off including it in this edition as he felt any translation of Book II would be incomplete without the translation of Book III (the German edition of Book III did not appear until 1894).
Das Kapital had little immediate impact – the 1867 German edition sold only 1,000 copies in five years – but it was around the time of the appearance of this translation that the real impact of the book began to be felt, in great part thanks to Engels’ promoting activities. The present translation was reproduced, with corrections, to form the first complete English Capital. Based on the third German edition, but also inclusive of the substantial changes which Marx introduced for the French translation of 1872–5, it was disseminated at the turn of the century at a time when the nascent international socialist movement took hold, and remained the standard text for the English-speaking public, continuing to be revised and republished as the authority text until the 1950s.
The Athenaeum reviewer of the first English translation (1887) later wrote: ‘Under the guise of a critical analysis of capital, Karl Marx’s work is principally a polemic against capitalists and the capitalist mode of production, and is it this polemical tone which is its chief charm’. The historical-polemic passages, with their formidable documentation from British official sources, have remained memorable; and, as Marx (a cronic furunculosis victim) wrote to Engels while the volume was still in the press, ‘I hope the bourgousie will remember my carbuncles all the rest of their lives’.’ (ibid.)
Draper II, M129; Printing and the Mind of Man 359 (for the first German edition); Rubel 633; Sraffa 3873; Stammhammer I, p. 145.