Letter to Hermann Schluter, March 3, 1886

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 3 March 1886


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


ENGELS TO HERMANN SCHLÜTER

IN HOTTINGEN-ZURICH

[London,] 3 March 1886

Dear Sir,

Would you kindly send Williams & Norgate, 14 Henrietta St., Covent Garden, London—1 copy of Socialism: Utopian etc. together with bill (incl. postage) in a wrapper—these people applied to me (they are my booksellers and, incidentally, publishers, a big firm) and I wrote and told them that my things are always to be had from the Volksbuchhandlung.[1]

Mrs Wischnewetzky played you a rotten trick with her ms.[2] For upon her insisting it was a matter of life and death, I had to buckle to straight away, and now the English translation of Capital has got to be done without delay, competition having cropped up (see To-Day) 527 in a menacing form. So if all is not to be lost, I must forge ahead and drop everything else, including the Peasant War.[3] The rival translation is, by the way, quite shocking, but so much the worse if it's not elbowed out forthwith.

Kindest regards,

Yours,

F.E.

  1. ↑ Social Democratic bookshop in Zurich
  2. ↑ The reference is to the manuscript of the English translation of Engels' book The Condition of the Working-Class in England (present edition, Vol. 4) prepared by the American socialist Florence Kelley-Wischnewetzky for publication in the United States (see also Note 360).
  3. ↑ The reference is to Engels' plans to revise The Peasant War in Germany (see present edition, Vol. 10), which he failed to carry out. For the fragments which have survived and plans of the book see present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 554-55.