Communisme

1906 · 88451 — Chicago Ill: Charles H. Kerr & Co. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. 1906 1907 1909. First Editions First Printings. Three Volumes. Octavo. 22.5cm. Publisher's deep maroon ribbed cloth titled in gilt to spines and ruled in blind to boards. 869pp.; 618pp.; 1048pp. Generally strong and tight; mild scuffing and to spine ends and corners and a few minor exterior stains. Spine gilt is significantly oxidized to Vol II as is usually seen on the first printing; internally clean and fresh some very light spotting in places mainly confined to the page edges. A very good handsome set of first printings. <br /> <br /> A full set of first printings of this bibliographically complex edition issued over the course of three years. Marx published the first volume of his epic analysis of capitalism in German in 1867. The first translation into English was of Volume 1 only and was accomplished by Edward Aveling and Samuel Moore in 1887 based on the revised 4th German edition as edited by Engels. The 1906 first American printing under the Charles Kerr impint as here largely follows this translation with the subsequent translation work for Volumes II and III being performed by Ernest Untermann. Thus the earliest printings of the Kerr edition comprise the first complete edition of Capital in the English language. The printing was done in Chicago by James Higgins Kerr's printer of choice making this also the first complete edition of Capital to be printed entirely by a union-run print shop. Untermann did most of his translation work from remote Florida beginning the effort in 1905 discovering in the process a number of indices footnotes and at least ten pages of text that Aveling and Moore had not included in their London edition - making the Kerr edition the most complete up to its time. <br /> <br /> Kerr burned through the first two-thousand copy print run of Volume I almost immediately and rushed to get Volume II out by July 1907. It's very possible that financial constraints were already making themselves known by Volume II as Kerr was selling the books at a loss to encourage sales; the almost ubiquitous oxidation of the gilt on Vol II is likely a result of experimental economy that swiftly failed. Vol III returns to the higher standards of the first volume. The bindings on the first printings also feature a triple blind rule to the ribbed cloth boards with subsequent printings having double rules. Kerr's reprint system seems to have incorporated dates on the title pages for some length of time with the dates on the copyright pages remaining unchanged; after a certain point around the early 1920's reprints were issued without dates to the title pages and any volume without a date can safely be deemed a post-1920s reprint. Issues of Kerr's International Socialist Review from the period of printing recount in detail some of his problems and concerns publishing and selling the work with detailed data on dates numbers of copies and the firm's hopes for the completed book. <br /> <br /> Genuine first printing sets of this important edition are tremendously scarce in commerce. The lack of any real bibliographical authority for the American edition combined with Kerr's generally lax approach to differentiating printings has over the years led to frequent errors and misjudgments on the part of cataloguers including in full disclosure ourselves. After a good deal of research most in the advertising pages of the International Socialist Review we're confident we've finally got it right. Charles H. Kerr & Co. [London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.] unknown