“In 1883 Marx died, and the whole of this work fell on Engels’ shoulders. When Marx died, Engels was already sixty-three years of age, but, nevertheless, not only did he continue to defend with all his wonted vigour his and Marx’s theories, not only did he continue to apply the materialistic conception of history to all the important questions of the day – writing numerous pamphlets and articles – but he continued his own philosophic and historical studies, acted as general adviser to the workers and Socialists of all nations, and last, and what he considered to be most important of all, and as a first duty, he worked on the completion of the work began by Marx. Perhaps we cannot more vividly bring to the mind of the reader the life of Engels after the death of Marx than by quoting Engels’ own description of it in his preface to the third volume of ‘Capital’ in 1874. We shall see from it, too, how much ‘Capital’ is really the work of Engels almost as much as that of Marx. “In the first place it was a weakness of my eyes which restricted my time of writing to a minimum for years, and which permits me even now only exceptionally to do any writing by artificial light. “There were, furthermore, other labours which I could not refuse, such as new editions and translations of earlier works of Marx and myself, revisions, prefaces, supplements, which frequently required special study, etc. There was, above all, the English edition of the first volume of this work, for whose text I am ultimately responsible and which absorbed much of my time. Whoever has followed the colossal growth of international Socialist literature during the last ten years, especially the great number of translations of earlier works of Marx and myself, will agree with me in congratulating myself that there is but a limited number of languages in which I am able to assist a translator and which compel me to accede to the request for a revision. (…)”. [Zelda Kahan-Coates, The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels. In Commemoration of the Engels Centenary, 1820 – November 28 – 1920, 1920]