ABSTRACT
This posthumous work, important on account of its author’s name, was edited by Dr. H. Gesche. She explains that she persuaded K. to string these essays together into a book; that after his death she rewrote much of the book from his notes and drafts, and from opinions she had heard him express; that she added the last few pages (duly marked), and that throughout ‘eigene Ergänzungen und Formulierungen’ too numerous to be marked or distinguished have been used, though always ‘in some form’ based on K.’s notes, or his words as remembered and interpreted by her. What we have, therefore, is ‘in some form’ K.’s book, though no one will ever know how much of it he would have published if he had lived, how much changed after more checking, and how much discarded as unworthy of publication. The book will now act on scholarship as it stands, and it is thus that we must take it. But in all that will have to be said about it the exceptional circumstances of its production should constantly be borne in mind.
