Letter to Isaac Ironside, June 21, 1856

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 21 June 1856


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 29, Moscow 1962. Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO ISAAC IRONSIDE[1]

IN SHEFFIELD

[Draft]

Manchester, [21 June 1856] 34 Butler St., Greenheys

Dear Sir,

I received your letter d.d. June 14 this morning only, as it had to be sent to me here to Manchester where I shall stay for some weeks.

I have duly considered your proposal, and, on the whole, accede to it.[2] In a matter like this, it is impossible to mention expressly every small particular, to agree upon the size of type pp., neither can I anticipate that any difficulties may arise therefrom, nor from the reservations to make as to 'copy used'.

I shall therefore provide you in time for next Saturday's but one's publication with fully 2 columns of matter and keep you amply supplied every week to that extent.

It would be most convenient to me (if your arrangements admit of it) to receive a remittance say after every fresh weekly publication.

As to your reprinting the papers in your serials, I have no objection, reserving to myself, of course, the right of using the materials, later on, in any way I may see it fit to use them.

As I am sure that you will not suppress historical truth out of prejudice or party-consideration [...][3]

As to the latter point you will think it only just, that should any points be suppressed, which in my conviction are of decisive

historical importance, I shall consider myself obliged to stop the publication.

In thanking you for the serials you were so kind to send me, I cannot but regret that you did not think fit to communicate to me the proof-sheets of the 'Story of the life of Lord Palmerston'.[4]

Sentences, historical data, quotations from Palmerston's speeches—everything is so disfigured by errata that, in my opinion, the pamphlet, in its present form, is not only useless but positively mischievous.

A few words on the plan of the whole publication will suffice. I do not adopt the usual manner of opening the whole theme by general considerations, but on the contrary commence with facts.

In contradistinction to the usual manner of historical writers, I shall not commence this publication with general considerations, but with facts. The first chapter will be composed of despatches belonging to different epochs of that century, in order to show up the Russian spirit of English diplomacy during the 18th.[5]

I hope I need not tell you that I am no 'commercial' writer and that no [...][6]

[7] [8]

  1. ↑ Only part of the draft of Marx's letter to Isaac Ironside, editor of The Sheffield Free Press, has reached us. The beginning, up to and including the words 'I shall consider myself obliged to stop the publication', is written in pencil in Engels' hand with changes in ink by Marx. The rest of the text, with much struck out, is in Marx's writing. That the draft was written on 21 June 1856 can be seen from Marx's letter to his wife written on the same day. Ironside answered the letter on 23 June 1856.—57
  2. ↑ This refers to the publication of Marx's Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century in The Sheffield Free Press (see Note 61). Further on Marx speaks of Ironside's intention to publish this work in the Urquhartites' Free Press Serials, an intention which failed to materialise.—57
  3. ↑ The sentence is unfinished in the original.
  4. ↑ In 1856 Marx's series of articles Lord Palmerston, originally intended for and partly published in the New-York Daily Tribune (see present edition, Vol. 12), appeared in Sheffield under the title The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston ( The Free Press Serials, No. 5, 1856). This was a reproduction of the series as published under the same title between December 1855 and February 1856 in several issues of The Free Press, the Urquhartites' London paper. Apart from this, one of the articles, published in The Sheffield Free Press in November 1855, appeared as a pamphlet in Sheffield in 1856 (The Free Press Serials, No. 4a).—44, 58
  5. ↑ This paragraph is crossed out in the original.
  6. ↑ The manuscript breaks off here.
  7. ↑ K. Marx, Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century.
  8. ↑ Here the following passage is crossed out in the manuscript: 'There are to follow some English pamphlets belonging to the epoch of Peter I; having thus made the reader familiar 1) [with] the infamies of English diplomacy, 2) with the protest [...]. From one of these despatches you will see how England conspired with Russia to crush [...]. These despatches will form a more eloquent introduction to [...].'