Letter to Otto Meissner, February 22, 1865

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 22 February 1865


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXV, Moscow, 1934
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


ENGELS TO OTTO MEISSNER

IN HAMBURG

Manchester, 22 February 1865

Dear Sir,

Your kind letter of 17th inst. has only just been delivered to me, since postal communication via Ostende has been interrupted for three full days, and I am greatly obliged to you for your prompt agreement to publish, and more especially for your rapid prosecution of the printing.[1]

I accept your fee of 2 louis-d'or per sheet of print and likewise leave it to you to decide the number of copies to be printed, under the condition, however, that you inform me of it in your next letter; it goes without saying [that I] am only making [over the first impression][2] for this fee.

Announcements in the [newspapers shall be] attended to forthwith.

The apparent delay in [despatch] here, to which you justifiably allude, arose from the following: I finished on Saturday evening, 11 February, and wrote the accompanying letter late that night; the letter was taken to the post on Monday 13th at 10.00 a.m. and went by the mail-boat from Dover that Monday evening—no later than it would have done if I had posted it on Saturday evening. The pious English do not allow mail-steamers to leave on Sunday evening, at least not to Ostende.

Yours respectfully

Fr. Engels

I hope to receive 12 copies by post here on 27th or 28th inst.

  1. ↑ Engels refers to his pamphlet The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party.
  2. ↑ The manuscript is damaged; here and below the words in square brackets are reconstructed according to Engels' letter to Marx of 22 February 1865.