[COMMUNISM] MARX, Karl; J. Roy, trans.

Le Capital

Paris: Maurice Lachatre et Cie. [1872-1875]. First French Edition. Large octavo (28.5cm.); original parts bound in early 20th century blue cloth, gilt-lettered spine; 351pp.; pictorial half title and title pages, full-paged steel-engraved portrait and facsimile, additional vignettes throughout; text printed in double column. Boards a bit rubbed and corners bumped, foxing and toning to preliminaries as well as minor dampstaining to last few leaves of text, light foxing to rear cover; overall Very Good and sound.

First appearance in French of Marx's "Das Kapital," the translation the only such to have been executed with the collaboration of the author, whose letter to Lachatre appears in facsimile on p. [7]: "J'applaudis à votre idée de publier la traduction de 'Das Kapital' en livraisons périodiques. Sous cette forme l'ouvrage sera plus accessible à la classe ouvrière et pour moi cette considération l'emporte sur toute autre" ("I congratulate you on your idea to publish the translation of 'Das Kapital' as a periodical. In this format the work should be more accessible to the working class and to me this is more important than all else" (our translation). Maurice Lachatre (1814-1900) was a Parisian radical bookseller, publisher, and collaborator of Félix Pyat's (with whom Marx butted heads over the growth of the International Working Men's Association in France). Lachatre's projected publication of the anarchist newspaper "La Commune" nearly cost him his life after the fall of the Paris Commune, when his bookshop was attacked with murderous intent by the Versaillaise army (see "The Publisher's Weekly," Vol. 19 (1881), pp. 50-1). It was while exiled first in Belgium and then Switzerland that Lachatre began work on publishing the present edition, though he was not free to return to Paris until 1879.

Price: $4,000.00

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