Letter to Friedrich Engels, June 26, 1855

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 26 June 1855


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 26 June 1855 28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Engels,

I did not send off any article last Friday[1] because [articles dispatched] simultaneously from London and Manchester would have aroused the fellows' suspicions. On Tuesday (last)[2] I sent off an article of an entirely general nature on Bonaparte's diplomacy, the treaties of 1815 and the Prussian Field Marshal Knesebeck.[3]

For at the Congress of Vienna the latter cracked some good jokes about the Poles.[4]

Next Friday[5] it will be virtually impossible to avoid writing a military piece about the affair at Malakhov and Redan on the anniversary of Waterloo.[6] Tomorrow and the day after I shall go to the library and look up something on the Spanish army. You shall have what I can find by the end of this week in any case. Regarding your pamphlet Eisner writes to me:

'You have far too lofty an idea of our booksellers if you believe that any one of them would consent to bring out something written by Engels. All those I asked refused, no doubt because they are afraid of acquiring the reputation of being revolutionary.... Should you intend making inquiries in Berlin, perhaps Alexander Duncker would be most likely to take the work.'

Weerth could negotiate with Duncker.[7]

The demonstration in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon had quite a revolutionary air.[8]

This short note is written to the accompaniment of an appalling toothache which has been plaguing me for a week now.

Salut!

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ 22 June
  2. ↑ 19 June
  3. ↑ K. Marx, 'Eccentricities of Politics'.
  4. ↑ A reference to F. Knesebeck's Denkschrift, betreffend die Gleichgewichts-Lage Europa's, beim Zusammentritte des Wiener Congresses verfaßt, pp. 13-14.
  5. ↑ 29 June
  6. ↑ On 29 June Engels wrote 'From Sevastopol' (see present edition, Vol. 14) about the Allies' unsuccessful storm of Sevastopol on 18(6) June 1855—the fortieth anniversary of Waterloo. The main French attack was directed against Malakhov Hill and the English against the Redan (Third Bastion)
  7. ↑ In a letter of 13 August 1855 which has not survived, Engels asked Weerth, then in Hamburg, to negotiate with Duncker about his, Engels', pamphlet on pan-Slavism (see Note 609). As emerges from Weerth's reply to Engels of 24 August, his negotiations with Duncker failed
  8. ↑ A demonstration of Chartists was held in Hyde Park on 24 June 1855, in protest against a series of anti-popular measures adopted by Parliament (in particular, the prohibition of Sunday trading). Marx took part in this demonstration with other German revolutionary democrats and described it in 'Anti-Church Movement.—Demonstration in Hyde Park' (see present edition, Vol. 14)