Jul 30, 2020 - Sale 2543

Sale 2543 - Lot 354

Price Realized: $ 7,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
(ECONOMICS.) ENGELS, FREDERICK. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Translated by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky. 8vo, original brown cloth over bevelled edges, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, top edges gilt, few small stains on front cover, corners slightly bumped; upper outer thin dampstain to blank margins not affecting text to approximately last 50 or so pages extending to top corner of rear board, faint spotting to endleaves, ownership blindstamp on blank preliminary (partially attached to preceding front flyleaf), chip at top of rear free endpaper, small wormhole to bottom of rear hinge. New York: John W. Lovell Company, (1887)

Additional Details

First edition in English and a major contribution to the formation of Marxian socialism, the forerunner to Karl Marx's Das Kapital. The daughter of a Philadelphia judge, Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky "exerted an immediate and dramatic influence on the generation of women reformers clustered within the social settlement movement during the Progressive Era. Her understanding of the material basis of class conflict and her familiarity with American political institutions, combined with her spirited personality, placed her in the vanguard of a generation of reformers who sought to make American government more responsive to what they saw as the needs of working people" (ANB). Rare.