Eleanor Marx: A Life
There are some people whose lives intersect during an era in which great changes occur; there are others who are instrumental in ensuring that those changes happen. Eleanor Marx, Karl Marx’s youngest daughter, was both. The background to “Tussy’s” childhood and young adulthood were the writing of Marx’s masterwork, Das Kapital, and Tussy – polyglot, largely homeschooled and described by her mother as political from head to toe – not only absorbed socialism in its broadest and most international sense, but expanded on it and saw to its practical application after her father’s death.
Holmes’s lucidly written biography of a woman whose role in the arenas of social justice and feminism is not nearly well enough appreciated held me spellbound from beginning to end. Through Eleanor’s life, Holmes paints a fascinating, extensive picture of late Victorian life in England and America and continental Europe that could easily serve as a reference point for further exploration, and yet is detailed enough to satisfy the general reader. I had one small issue – I’m not sure if the year of publisher Henry Vizetelly’s death is given correctly – but that’s a minor point given the sheer scope of the work. Highly recommended both as a historical reference ‘keeper’ and as a good read.
