German and of the French translation, both of which appeared in 1873, and he had intended to superintend personally the edition of an English version. But the state of his health interfered with this plan. Engels utilised his notes and the text of the French edition of 1873 in the preparation of a third German edition, and this served as a basis for the first edition of the English translation.
Owing to the fact that the title page of this English translation (published by Swan Sonnenschein & Co.) did not distinctly specify that this was but volume I, it has often been mistaken for the complete work, in spite of the fact that the prefaces of Marx and Engels clearly pointed to the actual condition of the matter.
In 1890, four years after the publication of the first English edition, Engels edited the proofs for a fourth German edition of volume I and enlarged it still more after a repeated comparison with the French edition and manuscript notes of Marx. But the Swan Sonnenschein edition did not adopt this new version in its subsequent English issues.
This first American edition will be the first complete English edition of the entire Marxian theories of Capitalist Production. It will contain all three volumes of Capital in full. The present volume, I, deals with The Process of Capitalist Production in the strict meaning of the term "production." Volume II will treat of The Process of Capitalist Circulation in the strict meaning of the term "circulation." Volume III will contain the final analysis of The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole, that is of Production and Circulation in their mutual interrelations.
The Theories of Surplus-Value, Kautsky's elaboration of the posthumous notes of Marx and Engels, will in due time be published in an English translation as a separate work.
