Letter to Bertha Augusti, October 25, 1879

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 25 October 1879


First published in Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, Nr. 5, Berlin, 1966
Published in English for the first time in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1979
Reproduced in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45

TO BERTHA AUGUSTI IN KOBLENZ

[London,] 25 October 1879

Dear Mrs Bertha,

I have a (tiresome) visitor sitting next to me, but do not wish to miss the opportunity of telling you in all haste how grateful I am to you for the pleasure afforded me by reading your novel in the Kölnische."[1] Great talent is discernible by all, but the achievement is particularly surprising to one who is aware of the confined and cloistered conditions in which you work. Moreover I would take the liberty of adding that I am a great heretic as far as German novels are concerned, think nothing of them and have been greatly spoiled by the best French, English and Russian novelists. Hence it was also with my habitual mistrust that I embarked on the reading of your Verhängnisvolles Jahr.

Wishing you all prosperity,

Most cordially yours,

Karl Marx

  1. ↑ B. Augusti, Ein verhängnisvolles Jahr. In: Kölnische Zeitung, Nos. 247-302, 6 September-1 October 1879.