A Critical Analysis Of Capitalist Production
MARX'S CRITIQUE OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM
Capital A Critical Analysis Of Capitalist Production
Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey, & Co., 1887.
First edition in English. 8vo. Two volumes. Original publisher's red cloth, lettered in gilt and with two gilt rules to the spine. Black coated endpapers. A very good set, with some wear to the spine ends resulting in a little loss on the first volume. Internally fresh with perfect hinges. An uncommonly sound set of a book rarely found without extensive repair. Contemporary ownership inscription of one Thomas Jones to the half title of the first volume.
The first appearance of Marx's great economic treatise in the language of the country where it was written, one of only 300 copies issued in Britain. The remaining 200 copies of the edition were sold to America.
Marx considered the book to be an extension of his Zur Kritik Der Politischen Oekonomie (1859), but in reality the work is much more than that, being the culmination of his previous quarter-century's study of economics, chiefly carried out in the Reading Room of the British Museum.
The translation into English was carried out under the editorship of Friedrich Engels by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. Aveling was married to Marx's youngest daughter Eleanor, who in reality did a good deal of work on the translation, and is credited for this in Engels' preface.
In a letter of 10th March 1887 written to another of Marx's daughters, Laura Lafargue, Engels notes that the first English edition of Capital, of 500 copies, had nearly sold through and that "nearly half the edition, as far as I can calculate, has gone to America". The royalty statement Engels received at the end of 1887 from Sonnenschein confirms this, with 200 copies marked as sold in America, and of the 300 remaining copies issued in England 224 had sold, with the remainder given gratis to the press, the Marx family and Engels.
Where this edition is presently encountered it is very often in a poor state, either heavily repaired or very much in need of it. Honest, unsophisticated copies such as this are uncommon.
PMM 349
Stock ID: 40275
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