Lot Essay
PRINTING AND THE MIND OF MAN (326) DESCRIBES THIS AS ONE OF THE OUTSTANDING POLITICAL DOCUMENTS OF ALL TIME. It was commissioned by the Second Congress of the Communist League, a largely German body of revolutionary exiles, which met in London in November-December 1847. Meeting in Brussels, Marx and Engels worked jointly on the Communist Manifesto text, the manuscript reached London at the beginning of February 1848 and was promptly produced in pamphlet form by a German printer in Bishopsgate, mainly for private circulation in the League.
Rubel, Bibliographie des oeuvres de Karl Marx (1956) no.70; Andreas, Le Manifeste Communiste de Marx et Engels (Milan 1963) pp.11-12, mistakenly identifying variant issues. There was in fact a stop-press correction of the page numeral on p.17 early in the run (3 uncorrected copies are known), but otherwise the entire first edition was printed from the same setting and quickly distributed. A second edition followed almost immediately.
EXTREMELY RARE: only 16 copies, including the present, are known. Only one other copy may be in private hands, and there are no copies in any British, French or Japanese libraries.
The location of known copies is: Munich (Bayr. Staatsbibliothek), Hamburg (Staatsbibliothek), Basle University Library, Geneva (Bibliotheca Bodmeriana), Amsterdam (Institute of Social History, 2 copies), Amsterdam University Library, Moscow (Institute of Marxism-Leninism), Harvard University Library (2 copies), Pittsburgh University Library, Princeton University Library, St. Louis University Library, Milan (Instituto Feltrinelli); the Schocken copy, sold Hamburg 1965 and again Paris 1979 (present ownership unknown).
Rubel, Bibliographie des oeuvres de Karl Marx (1956) no.70; Andreas, Le Manifeste Communiste de Marx et Engels (Milan 1963) pp.11-12, mistakenly identifying variant issues. There was in fact a stop-press correction of the page numeral on p.17 early in the run (3 uncorrected copies are known), but otherwise the entire first edition was printed from the same setting and quickly distributed. A second edition followed almost immediately.
EXTREMELY RARE: only 16 copies, including the present, are known. Only one other copy may be in private hands, and there are no copies in any British, French or Japanese libraries.
The location of known copies is: Munich (Bayr. Staatsbibliothek), Hamburg (Staatsbibliothek), Basle University Library, Geneva (Bibliotheca Bodmeriana), Amsterdam (Institute of Social History, 2 copies), Amsterdam University Library, Moscow (Institute of Marxism-Leninism), Harvard University Library (2 copies), Pittsburgh University Library, Princeton University Library, St. Louis University Library, Milan (Instituto Feltrinelli); the Schocken copy, sold Hamburg 1965 and again Paris 1979 (present ownership unknown).