Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 With Appendix Written 1886, and Preface 1887. Translated by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky.

London: William Reeves, 1888. Full Description:

ENGELS, Friedrich. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. With Appendix Written 1886, and Preface 1887. Translated by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky. London: William Reeves, 1888.

First British edition, bound from the American sheets of the first edition in English which was published one year earlier, 1887, in New York. The sheets are the American first edition sheets, with a new title-page. The first edition printed in the UK did not appear for another four years. Octavo (7 1/4 x 4 7/8 inches; 185 x 123 mm. [4], vi, [3]-199, [1, note], ix, [ii, index], [1, blank] pp. (truncated) Complete. Both this and the American edition are quite rare, and this present edition more so. We could find only one worn copy at auction from 2006.

First published in Germany in 1848, Engels wrote an updated Appendix for the text in 1886 which appears in these sheets for the first time. In addition to this edition being translated by American social reformer Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky, at her request, Engels also provided a new preface in 1887 to go along with this English translation. This preface mostly includes information about the American working class. It starts "Ten months have elapsed since, at the translator’s wish, I wrote the Appendix to this book; and during these ten months, a revolution has been accomplished in American society such as, in any other country, would have taken at least ten years."

Publisher's full brown cloth with beveled edges. Spine lettered in gilt. Top edge gilt. Some very minor wear to spine extremities , board edges and corners. Some very mild wrinkling to cloth. Some light foxing and toning to endpapers and title-page. Title-page with a small abrasion, just touching one letter. Still an excellent copy.

"Friedrich Engels was born in 1820 in Barmen, Germany. His father was a wealthy man with interests in a textile business in England. This fact as well as his association with Karl Marx would dominate his existence. The father wished the son to follow in his footsteps and so sent him to clerk for three years at the manufacturing town of Bremen. Because of this, Engels never really had a University Education. Yet even at this stage (about 20 years old) he was already becoming active in radical causes and writing pamphlets on philosophy and economics. Engels would meet Marx in 1842 in Cologne and their friendship would flower in Paris in 1844. Engels, who was a thinker in his own right, thought Marx the more original, and soon hitched his intellectual wagon to Marx's star. In the early 1840s he spent a few years in England working as a manager at one of his father's mills. It was this experience that produced his first prominent work, "The Condition of the Working Class in England" published in 1844 [in Germany]." (W.J. Rayment).

Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky "was an American social reformer who contributed to the development of state and federal labour and social welfare legislation in the United States." (Brittanica)

HBS 69296.

$13,500. (Inventory #: 69296)