ENGELS TO FLORENCE KELLEY-WISCHNEWETZKY 5*° 

London, 25 February 1886 

Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky, 

To-day mailed to you, registered, the rest of the ms. with my— 
introduction or postscript — according to where it may suit you to 
place it. I believe the title had better be a simple translation: The - 
Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, etc. 

I am glad that all obstacles to publication have been successfully 
overcome. Only I am sorry that Miss Foster has applied to the Execu- 
tive of the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei in New York, °*° as appears 
from their report of meeting in Der Sozialist, New York, 13th Febru- 
ary. Neither Marx nor myself have ever committed the least act 
which might be interpreted into asking any Working Organisation to 
do us any personal favour— and this was necessary not only for the 
sake of our own independence but also on account of the constant 
bourgeois denunciations of ‘demagogues who coax the workmen out 
of their hard-earned pennies in order to spend them for their own 
purposes’. I shall therefore be compelled to inform that Executive 
that this application was made entirely without my knowledge or au- 
thority. Miss Foster no doubt acted in what she thought the best way, 
and this step of hers is in itself no doubt perfectly admissible; still, if 
I could have foreseen it, I should have been compelled to do every- 
thing in my power to prevent it. *°° 

The revision of your translation has delayed that of the English 
translation of Das Kapital by three weeks— and at a most critical 
period of the year too. I shall set about it to-night and it may take me 
several months. After that, the German 3rd volume must be taken in 
hand; you see, therefore, that for some time it will be impossible for 
me to undertake the revision of other translations, unless few and far 
between and of small volume. I have at this moment waiting here an 
Italian translation of Marx’s Lohnarbeit und Kapital* which must wait 
some weeks at least. But if you will translate that into English (it was 
recently republished at Zurich) and will not be too pressing for time, 
I shall be glad to revise it, and you cannot have a better popular 
pamphlet than that. My Entwicklung” Aveling intends to translate, 
and as the subject is in part rather difficult, I could not well give it to 
anyone except he be here on the spot, accessible to verbal explana- 
tion. 928 As to my Anti-Dühring I hardly think the English speaking 
public would swallow that controversy and the hostility to religion 
which pervades the book. However we may discuss that later on, if 
you are of a different opinion. At present Marx’s posthumous 
manuscripts must be dealt with before anything else. 

The semi-Hegelian language of a good many passages of my old 
book is not only untranslatable but has lost the greater part of its 
meaning even in German. I have therefore modernised it as much as 
possible. 

Yours very truly, 
F. Engels