Letter to Karl Kautsky, October 13, 1884

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 13 October 1884


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


ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY

IN ZURICH

[London,] 13 October 1884

In great haste. The sheets have been returned to Dietz after resto-ration of h, tz and the botched foreign words.[1] Wrote telling Dietz that both of you[2] had protested and that I had concurred and had made the above-mentioned reinstatements in agreement with you. I would, I said, no more have spelling imposed upon me than I would a woman and hence if the proofs were not corrected in accordance with my demands, I should 1) call for the deletion of all my notes and 2) not provide a preface,[3] as I couldn't possibly have two kinds of spelling for my stuff.

Do you really not wish to put your names on the title page as trans-lators? The title should in any case be so worded that I simply appear as the author of the notes and preface unless you expressly insist on the revision mentioned, though I consider this quite unnecessary.

Another whole day has been wasted thanks to these asininities. Right in the middle of election time,[4] what's more.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ The reference is to the German edition of Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy, which appeared in Stuttgart in January 1885 (see Note 118). The book included, in place of Marx's preface, his article 'On Proudhon' (see present edition, Vol. 20) and two appendices: an excerpt from Marx's work A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy on the theory of the English socialist John Gray (see present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 320-23), and a translation of the 'Speech on the Question of Free Trade' (Vol. 6). At one time Die Neue Zeit was printed in a distinctive orthography proposed by Bruno Geiser.
  2. ↑ Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein
  3. ↑ F. Engels, 'Marx and Rodbertus'.
  4. ↑ The reference is to the regular elections to the German Reichstag which took place on 28 October 1884.