Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, May 10, 1883

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 10 May 1883


First published, in Russian, in Marx-Engels Archives, Vol. I (VI), Moscow
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT

IN BORSDORF NEAR LEIPZIG

London, 10 May 1883

Dear Liebknecht,

If you carry on in this way, causing me unnecessary expenditure of ink by the schemes you keep hatching and the ill-considered actions you perform off your own bat, our correspondence would assuredly cease.

All I asked you for originally was a reply, telling me what my legal position was in regard to Wigand. The 1845 contract envisages a 2nd edition and lays down the fee to be paid for it.[1] Question:

1. Am I still bound by this? 2. If so, and if Wigand refuses to print a 2nd edition on the conditions of payment agreed, does that release me outright?

I have never been able to get an answer from you to these simple questions and, since you promised to obtain one for me, I can only describe it as neglect on your part.

Never have I instructed you either personally or via a third party to act on my behalf, and I cannot conceive why, at this moment, you took it into your head to set such a thing in motion off your own bat and without even reflecting. I would expressly request that you make no move whatever; I should at once write to Wigand and disclaim everything.

Meissner has written today; makes no mention at all of publication instalments.[2] The contract does not entitle us to interfere here. But if Dietz can show Meissner that it is to his own advantage, he may do it after all.

Lafargue's address: 66 Boulevard de Port-Royal, Paris (close to Ste-Pélagie, handy for a chap going to quod).9

Photographs will be delivered in batches and sent to Dietz as soon as possible.[3]

  1. ↑ The reference is to Engels' The Condition of the Working-Class in England. From Personal Observation and Authentic Sources (see present edition, Vol. 4) which was put out in early 1845 by Otto Wigand's publishing house in Leipzig. In 1872-73 Engels discussed with Liebknecht the plan for a second edition of his book since the latter was planning to publish it in a socio-political literature series with the participation of the editorial board of Der Volksstaat (see present edition, Vol. 44, pp. 375, 477). It is clear from the letters which Wilhelm Liebknecht and Adolf Hepner wrote to Engels in early 1873 that they helped to sort out Engels' legal relations with the Leipzig publishing house. However, this matter was not clarified for the next 12 years (see Engels' letter of 19 January 1885 to August Bebel, this volume, p. 253). The second authorised edition of The Condition of the Working-Class in England was not published until 1892 by Dietz.
  2. ↑ This refers probably to the third German edition of Volume I of Capital.
  3. ↑ See this volume, pp. 15-16.