Eleanor Marx

The extraordinary and dramatic biography of the first modern feminist, who spent her entire life fighting for the principle of equality 'Gripping ... Most lives would be overshadowed by such a melodramatic end. But Marx's life was so much more than a murder mystery, as Rachel Holmes's gripping and vividly told biography demonstrates' Sunday Times 'Superb ... The story of this remarkable life is so well told, with a rare combination of pace, verve and scholarship' Jeanette Winterson, Daily Telegraph Unrestrained by convention, lion-hearted and free, Eleanor Marx (1855-98) was an exceptional woman. Hers was the first English translation of Flaubert's Mme Bovary. She pioneered the theatre of Henrik Ibsen. She was the first woman to lead the British dock workers' and gas workers' trades unions. For years she worked tirelessly for her father, Karl Marx, as personal secretary and researcher. Later she edited many of his key political works, and laid the foundations for his biography. But foremost among her achievements was her pioneering feminism. For her, sexual equality was a necessary precondition for a just society. Drawing strength from her family and their wide circle, including Friedrich Engels and Wilhelm Liebknecht, Eleanor Marx set out into the world to make a difference – her favourite motto: 'Go ahead!' With her closest friends - among them, Olive Schreiner, Havelock Ellis, George Bernard Shaw, Will Thorne and William Morris - she was at the epicentre of British socialism. She was also the only Marx to claim her Jewishness. But her life contained a deep sadness: she loved a faithless and dishonest man, the academic, actor and would-be playwright Edward Aveling. Yet despite the unhappiness he brought her, Eleanor Marx never wavered in her political life, ceaselessly campaigning and organising until her untimely end, which – with its letters, legacies, secrets and hidden paternity – reads in part like a novel by Wilkie Collins, and in part like the modern tragedy it was. Rachel Holmes has gone back to original sources to tell the story of the woman who did more than any other to transform British politics in the nineteenth century, who was unafraid to live her contradictions.

Yvonne Kapp’s monumental biography of the daughter of Karl Marx who became a radical activist Eleanor Marx is one of the most tragically overlooked radical figures in history, usually overshadowed by her father, Karl. But not only did she edit, translate, transcribe and collaborate with her father, she also led an extraordinary life as a labour organiser, trade unionist, translator, actor, writer and feminist. Much of this we only know because of this highly acclaimed, outstanding exception to the omission of Eleanor Marx from history. Yvonne Kapp’s biography was first published at the height of feminist organising in the 1970s. Kapp brilliantly succeeds in capturing Eleanor’s spirit, from a lively child opining on the world’s affairs, to the new woman, aspiring to the stage, earning her living as a free intellectual, and helping to lead England’s unskilled workers at the height of the new unionism. She was always more than, yet at the same time inescapably, Karl Marx’s daughter. It is also, inevitably, an unrivalled biography of the Marx household in Victorian London, of the Marx circle, and of Friedrich Engels, the family’s extraordinary mentor. This single-volume edition of Kapp’s foundational biography includes an introduction by Sally Alexander.

Eleanor Marx Aveling and Edward Aveling Letters from England, 1895, edited and with introductions by Tony Chandler and Stephen Williams, translated from the Russian by Francis King.

Shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize. A 2017 Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best Collection 2017. Shortlisted for the 2018 Irish Times Poetry Now Award. Features the poem 'Bride and Moth', shortlisted for the 2017 Listowel Writers' Week Irish Poem of the Year Award Following her 2013 debut This is Yarrow (winner of the Seamus Heaney Prize and the Shine / Strong Award), Tara Bergin returns with her second collection, The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx. The poems draw on folksong, fairytale and theatrical monologue as Bergin explores the alluring and sometimes tragic consequences of translation. When she committed suicide in 1898, Eleanor Marx (daughter of Karl Marx, pioneering sociologist, and translator of Flaubert's Madame Bovary) imitated Flaubert's heroine, Emma. Both women, in their own ways, died passionate deaths, and Bergin's poems are concerned with intense love, intense grief. With a sing-song rhythm and dark humour, they play off the natural theatricality of great lovers, great writers and great readers who, like the fancy-dressed children in 'Mask', are both 'themselves and strangers'. 'That s all they wanted.'

Eleanor Marx is one of the most tragically overlooked feminist intellectuals in history, usually overshadowed by her father, Karl Marx. But not only did she edit, translate, transcribe and collaborate with her father, she also spent her extraordinary life putting his ideas into practice as a labour organizer, feminist radical, and Marxist theorist. The outstanding exception to the omission of Eleanor Marx from history is Yvonne Kapp's highly acclaimed biography. First published at the height of feminist organizing in the 1970s, Kapp's work brilliantly succeeds in capturing Eleanor's spirit, from a lively child opining on the world's affairs, to the new woman, aspiring to the stage, earning her living as a free intellectual, and helping to lead England's unskilled workers at the height of the new unionism; being always more than, yet at the same time inescapably, Karl Marx's daughter. It is also, inevitably, an unrivalled biography of the Marx household in Victorian London, of the Marx circle, and of Friedrich Engels, the family's extraordinary mentor. During today's resurgence of feminist writing, organizing, and protesting, Kapp's foundational single-volume biography serves as a crucial corrective to a narrative that puts feminists and marxists on opposing sides of radical history.