Yvonne Kapp’s monumental biography of the daughter of Karl Marx who became a radical activist

Eleanor Marx is one of the most tragically overlooked feminist intellectuals in history, usually overshadowed by her father, Karl Marx. Eleanor was known to edit, translate, transcribe and collaborate with her father. She spent her extraordinary life putting his ideas into practice as a labour organiser, feminist radical and Marxist theorist.

The outstanding exception to the omission of Eleanor Marx from history is Yvonne Kapp’s highly acclaimed biography. It was first published at the height of feminist organising in the 1970s. Kapp’s work brilliantly succeeds in capturing Eleanor’s spirit. From a lively child opining on the world’s affairs, to the new woman, aspiring to the stage, earning her living as a free intellectual. Eleanor helped to lead England’s unskilled workers at the height of the new unionism. Always more than, yet at the same time inescapably, Karl Marx’s daughter. It is also, inevitably, an unrivalled biography of the Marx household in Victorian London. As well as insight into the Marx circle, Friedrich Engels, the family’s extraordinary mentor features too.

During today’s resurgence of feminist writing, organising and protesting, Kapp’s foundational single-volume biography serves as a crucial corrective to a narrative that puts feminists and marxists on opposing sides of radical history.

Publisher: Verso
Published: July 2018
Format: Book
Binding: Paperback
Interior: Black & White
Pages: 896
ISBN: 9781859845158