Books

First edition printed in America. Tall 8vo. xviii, 506pp. Brick red ribbed cloth blocked in blind on the boards and with a gilt spine title with black lines. Translated from the German by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. Edited by Frederick Engels. Cloth is rubbed at edges and hinges else this is a very good copy. The bibliography of this edition is a little complex. In 1890 the Humboldt Publishing Company published this edition in English of Das Kapital in four separate parts bound in stapled wrappers. Later, probably the following year, some copies were disassembled and bound into a single volume, as in the present case. The wrappered edition contained publisher's ads. These were sometimes bound into the single volumes, sometimes not, and, in one case, only a couple of ads were bound in. Some bindings were blocked in black on the boards, some not. There are reports that the publisher reprinted the text in 1891 or 1892 without the permission of the Marx family, which may explain the variants. This copy has no ads, nor black blocking on the boards, but has certainly been bound from parts. The now unused stab holes are plainly evident in the gutters in several places, especially near the beginning and ending of the part pages. In addition both pp. 255 and 383 show rust marks and glue residue from the wrappers. Even though another edition was published in the US in 1890 by Appleton, the sheets are said to have been printed in England with the US title pages printed in Scotland, thus making clear that this Humboldt edition was the first American printing of Das Kapital. The first German edition is listed in PMM.