Gierke's ideas arrived in England in 1900, the year that F. W. Maitland published his translation of a part of the third volume of Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht. As noteworthy as the translation itself was Maitland's celebrated introduction to it, in which he set out what he took to be the significance for English readers of Gierke's arguments. This was to be the first of two important introductions to English editions of Gierke's work. The second was produced by Ernest Barker in 1933, as a preface to his translation of that part of the fourth volume which deals with natural-law theories of state and corporation. What follows here is a history of the period in English political thought which is spanned by the appearance of these two translations. It attempts to chart the ways in which Gierke's ideas were developed in an English setting, often in directions different from any Gierke himself might have envisaged. But it also attempts to explain what is a marked difference between the two introductions provided by Gierke's English translators. For whereas Maitland is broadly approving of Gierke's doctrine of the real personality of associations, Barker is not. In fact, Barker's introduction may be said to mark the demise of English political pluralism, just as Maitland's introduction marks its beginnings. Part of the reason why ‘pluralism’ is no longer a term with any specifically Gierkean resonance is that the Gierkean movement which originally adopted it ultimately failed, and Barker tries to explain why.