Letter to Pyotr Lavrov, February 7, 1886

Author(s)	Friedrich Engels
Written	7 February 1886

First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
Translated from the French
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47

ENGELS TO PYOTR LAVROV

IN PARIS

[London,] 7 February 1886

My dear Lavrov,

Please tell me what meaning you attach to the word WORTHIES. When uttered by you I should hesitate to assign to it the philistine meaning which is virtually the official meaning over here and which embraces a whole gamut ranging from a Faraday to a Peabody or a Lady Burdett-Coutts. However I shall try and find what you want. The manuscript of the English translation of Volume I is at last to hand; I shall revise it straight away.^[1] After that I shall start final editing of Volume III. This will be hard, but I shall manage it in the end.

Yours ever,

F.E.

↑ The idea of translating Capital into English occurred to Marx as early as 1865, when he was working on the manuscript (see Marx's letter to Engels of 31 July 1865, present edition, Vol. 42). The British journalist and member of the International's General Council, Peter Fox, was to help Marx find a publisher. However, this matter was not settled due to Fox's death in 1869. The English translation of the first volume of Capital, edited by Engels, did not appear until after Marx's death, in January 1887, and was published by Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., London. The translation was done by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling between mid-1883 and March 1886. Eleanor Marx-Aveling took part in the preparatory work for the edition (see also this volume, pp. 33 and 127-28).

[1] The idea of translating Capital into English occurred to Marx as early as 1865, when he was working on the manuscript (see Marx's letter to Engels of 31 July 1865, present edition, Vol. 42). The British journalist and member of the International's General Council, Peter Fox, was to help Marx find a publisher. However, this matter was not settled due to Fox's death in 1869. The English translation of the first volume of Capital, edited by Engels, did not appear until after Marx's death, in January 1887, and was published by Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., London. The translation was done by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling between mid-1883 and March 1886. Eleanor Marx-Aveling took part in the preparatory work for the edition (see also this volume, pp. 33 and 127-28).

[1]