Letter to August Bebel, January 23, 1884

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 23 January 1884


First published, in Russian, in Marx-Engels Archives, Vol. I (VI), Moscow, 1932
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO AUGUST BEBEL

IN BORSDORF NEAR LEIPZIG[1]

London, 23 January 1884

Dear Bebel,

I forgot to say in Saturday's letter[2] that you and Liebknecht should on no account order copies of the third edition of Capital[3] since we shall be sending one for each of you as soon as we get any. A third will go to the party archives in Zurich.[4]

Tussy will have written to you regarding a translation of Die Frau.1*5 It's unlikely that you'll get any royalties from it, though there's no harm in trying—at most 3 PENCE = 0.25 mark per copy sold; that is the usual form here. The actual book could, I believe, only fetch, say, 2 à 2.50 marks here, of which 30% at least would go to the retail booksellers. Moreover, the kind of publishers who deal in such books are very few and far between and also pauvres.[5] We ourselves shall have to invest something like £200 in cash in the English edition of Capital,16 and may also have to advance the translator's fee, and then work on a fifty-fifty basis; it probably couldn't be done in any other way.

Kindest regards to Liebknecht and yourself from

Your

F.E.

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 102-03.
  2. ↑ See previous letter.
  3. ↑ the third German edition of Volume I of Capital
  4. ↑ The Archives of German Social Democracy were established by a decision of the Conference of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany held in Zurich from 19 to 21 August 1882. They contained manuscripts by figures from the German workers' movement, including Marx and Engels, literature on the history of Germany and the international workers' movement as well as the workers' press. The archives were originally based in Zurich and the initial documents were collected by Eduard Bernstein. From April 1883 the archives were run by Hermann Schlüter. In June 1888, following its move from Switzerland to London, the editorial board of Der Sozialdemokrat also transferred the archives of German Social Democracy to the same place. They were moved to Berlin following the repeal of the Anti-Socialist Law.
  5. ↑ poor