Origins of Totalitarianism, The.
Heavily Annotated
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, (1951).
8vo.; blue cloth, spine stamped in gilt; well-worn.
First edition. Arendt’s working copy, copiously annotated in pencil throughout the second half – beginning with chapter eight, “Continental Imperialism: the Pan-Movements” (p. 222), but especially throughout chapter nine, “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man” (pp. 266-98). In addition to occasional minor emendations – for example, changing “the mutual exploitation” to “by the exploitation” on page 236 – she indicates paragraphs and passages to move, delete or substitute with another. She adds and deletes footnotes, and dockets a good deal of text, “stet.” Chapter ten bears her hand as well, but with chapter eleven (pp. 233-375) – “The Totalitarian Movement” – she begins to tape typescript inserts to some of the margins (on pages 334 and 340), which she continues through chapter twelve, “Totalitarianism in Power” (on pages 376, 379, 400, 405, 408, 417, and 420). The final chapter, chapter thirteen, “Concluding Remarks,” she scraps altogether; and she gives a thorough going-over to the bibliography (pp. 441-59) indicating whether each source is to remain or get the axe, and writing in a small handful of additional sources. The index, interestingly, remains untouched.
Her 1953 essay, “Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government,” would become the last chapter in all later editions of Origins. Parts of the first edition’s “Concluding Remarks,” as indicated in Arendt’s copy, would be incorporated into later editions of the work. In the second edition (1958), Arendt's “Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution,” written the same year, was added as an Epilogue, but was deleted from all editions after the second. The best account of these various changes comes from the author herself: In a short article, “Totalitarianism,” published in The Meridian (1958) Arendt spells out why she thought the changes from the first edition were needed.
The Origins of Totalitarianism is Arendt’s most studied work. The differences she brought to bear between the first edition and all subsequent editions are considerable, and this copy shows her working thoughts on those changes.
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