Letter to Amalie Daniels, between October 4 and 8, 1851

This was a postscript written by Marx to Jenny Marx's letter to Amalie Daniels. It may be assumed that the reference is to books from Marx's library left in Cologne in Daniels' care when Marx was compelled to leave the Rhine Province after the suppression of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. In the autumn of 1850 Daniels sent a list of these books to Marx in London. Marx marked with asterisks those in which he was most interested and which he wished to be sent to him in England. They included grammar books, dictionaries, works by Hegel, Holbach, and Vico, and books on the history of political economy, and a considerable number of works by Utopian thinkers and socialists—Campanella, Morelly, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, Dézamy, Louis Blanc, Cabet, Weitling and others. The end of the letter, where Marx enumerated the books he needed, did not appear in the Kölnische Zeitung. The text of the letter, which got into the hands of the police, as well as of Marx's postscript has survived only as published in the Kölnische Zeitung together with other material concerning the communist trial in Cologne in October 1852. (MECW Note)

To Amalie Daniels in Cologne

[London, between 4 and 8 October 1851]

My dear Mrs Daniels,

I believe it is hardly necessary for me to mention the deep concern I feel about your husband's arrest and your own separation from him. I console myself with the conviction that the courts will not be able to allow his detention to drag on much longer without bringing the case before a jury, and that you and your husband possess fortitude enough to defy adversity. I should be much obliged to you if you would hand over to the bearer of these lines the following books for me....