[London,] 23 July 1874 
41 Maitland Park Road, N. W. 

My dear Fellow Citizen, 

After receipt of your last letter but one,*° I myself informed 
Rochefort of its contents, but he had already made an agreement 
with the English publisher who brings out the Lanterne anglo- 
frangaise in London. 

As to the delay with our publication,* you may rest assured that 
no one is more distressed by it than I am. It is not, as you appear 
to imagine, merely a question of details and of minor corrections 

4 of the French edition of the first volume of Capital 

of style; rather I had, indeed am still having, to do virtually the 
whole thing over again. Once condemned to this thankless task I 
added here and there some important new developments,” which 
will give the French edition—as I shall incidentally point out in 
the afterword—a value not possessed by the German original.* As 
to my French friends, they can only be of use on a few points of 
phraseology. 

My earlier letters must have convinced you that physical 
weakness alone has prevented my finishing it. My health has been 
further aggravated by family misfortunes: Mrs Longuet’s only 
child, a little angel ten months old,” has been taken from us by a 
sudden choleric attack, while my youngest daughter has been 
suffering for months past from a serious illness. 

However my physician “ —who has given me strict instructions to 
refrain for the time being from work of any kind—says that a stay 
at Karlsbad and the taking of its mineral waters will effect a 
complete cure. I leave on the 15th of August, so that I shall be 
able to resume work at the end of September, and you have my 
guarantee that the task will be finished by the end of November.” 
At present the delay cannot be of much importance, seeing that 
the dead season has begun. 

In any case, the previous delays, for which I was in no way 
responsible, and the total lack of publicity occasioned by the state 
of affairs in Paris, had long since killed off sales by instalment.** I 
have in my hands a letter from you (from San Sebastian) in which 
you Say so categorically, adding that it would be impossible to set 
things in motion again until after the sale of the complete work. 

I shall always be most grateful for the interest you have taken in 
this publication and for the patience with which you have put up 
with tiresome incidents. The need for a scientific basis for 
socialism is making itself increasingly felt in France, as everywhere 
else. 

Yours ever, 

Karl Marx