Letter to Bruno Schoenlank, August 29, 1887

Author(s)	Friedrich Engels
Written	29 August 1887

First published in Der Abend, No. 344, 25 July 1935
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48

ENGELS TO BRUNO SCHOENLANK

IN NUREMBERG

Eastbourne, 29 August 1887

Dear Mr Schoenlank,

Your letter, forwarded to me here by Kautsky, places me in something of a quandary. I read with interest the excerpts, published in the Neue Zeit, from your valuable work on the looking-glass industry and would not object on principle to your doing me the honour of dedicating the book to me.^[1] But, in the first place, dedications are now rather out of fashion and, in the second, Marx and I have always felt a certain aversion to such more or less uncalled-for-tributes. And at present I happen to be in a frame of mind which makes me think my merits grossly overrated in some quarters. If one is so fortunate as to collaborate for forty years with a greater man and measure oneself against him day by day, one is given the chance of evaluating one's own achievements in accordance with a true standard. And I feel instinctively that to place any undue emphasis on my own activities is unwittingly to detract from what we all of us owe to Marx.

Nor can I agree with you when you dub me the father of descriptive economics. You will find descriptive economics in Petty, Boisguillebert, Vauban, and Adam Smith, to name only a few. Such accounts, notably of proletarian conditions, were written by Frenchmen and Englishmen before I did mine. It was just that I was lucky enough to be precipitated into the heart of modern large-scale industry and to be the first whose eyes were opened to its implications—at any rate the most immediate ones.

So from a personal point of view, I would sooner you abandoned your intention, and this solely on the grounds outlined above. But should you fail to be convinced by them, I would not venture to dictate what you should do.

Yours very faithfully,
Fr. Engels

↑ In his letter of 20 August 1887, Bruno Schonlank, a German Social Democrat, told Engels about his intention to dedicate to him, Engels, the book being prepared for the press Die Further Quecksilber-Spiegelbelegen und ihre Arbeiter, of which excerpts had been printed in Neue Zeit, Nos 4, 5 and 6, 1887. The book came off the press in Stuttgart in 1888.

[1] In his letter of 20 August 1887, Bruno Schonlank, a German Social Democrat, told Engels about his intention to dedicate to him, Engels, the book being prepared for the press Die Further Quecksilber-Spiegelbelegen und ihre Arbeiter, of which excerpts had been printed in Neue Zeit, Nos 4, 5 and 6, 1887. The book came off the press in Stuttgart in 1888.

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