Letter to Friedrich Engels, November 21, 1853

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 21 November 1853


First published in Voprosy istorii KPSS, No. 3, Moscow, 1962
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

London, 21 November 1853 28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Engels,

Herewith a £2 postal order for Lupus, which I have received for him from Cluss, N.B. in response to my request. Also Willich's exceedingly sorry scrawl.[1]

You and Dronke must let me have, by Friday at the latest, statements on the bits which refer to myself. I shall include them in my GENERAL ANSWER[2] —in the form of statements. We must be as quick off the mark with our answer as the noble Willich was sluggish. Mind you make your statement a very humorous one.

Thanks for the Turkish article.[3] When it arrived, news of the Turkish retreat had already reached me, and I altered the thing accordingly. Do write; it's a month since you answered any of my letters with more than half a dozen lines.[4]

Your

K. M.

Won't you come up to town for Christmas and put up here? I now have a small room for you. You might be able to shake off the old man[5] for once.

  1. ↑ A. Willich, 'Doctor Karl Marx und seine "Enthüllungen"'.
  2. ↑ The reference is to the first of the two satirical poems by Freiligrath written on Marx's request specially for Die Revolution on 16 and 23 January 1852. The poet ridiculed the so-called German-American loan which Kinkel tried to raise in the USA (see Note 27). Kinkel's activity in America was described by Cluss in his letters to Wilhelm Wolff of 4-6 November and to Marx in mid-December 1851. Freiligrath's poems were published in German in the Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser, Nos. 10 and 27, 7 March and 4 July 1852, printed in Stuttgart and Tübingen. The first poem was also published in English in Notes to the People, No. 50, 10 April 1852. Both the Morgenblatt and Notes to the People carried an introduction, the contents of which were not identical in the two publications. The editors of the present edition have insufficient proof that it was Marx who wrote this introduction, though Freiligrath is known to have asked him to do so (Freiligraths Briefwechsel mit Marx und Engels, Berlin, 1968, Bd. I, S. 42-43). In America the first poem was published by Cluss in English in the newspaper The National Era, No. 282, 27 May 1852 (reproduced from the Notes to the People) with additions to the introduction made by Cluss, relating it to conditions in America. Die Revolution did not publish the poems until June 1852
  3. ↑ F. Engels, 'The Progress of the Turkish War'.
  4. ↑ Engels' letters to Marx of October-December 1853 have not been found
  5. ↑ Wilhelm Wolff