Books

Swan Sonnenschein, Lowery, & Co: London, 1887. Rare first edition in English, published two years before the first American edition of Karl Marx’s seminal work in both economic and political thought. Octavo, bound in half morocco over marbled boads, raised bands. Translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. In very good condition, with an ownership to the verso of volume one to the title page. Marx himself modestly described Das Kapital as a continuation of his Zur Kritik des Politischen Oekonomie, 1859. It was in fact the summation of his quarter of a century's economic studies". The 'Athenaeum' reviewer of the first English translation (1887) later wrote: 'Under the guise of a critical analysis of capital, Karl Marx's work is principally a polemic against capitalists and the capitalist mode of production, and it is this polemical tone which is its chief charm.' The historical-polemical passages, with their formidable…