Letter to Karl Marx, May 26, 1856

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 26 May 1856


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 26 May 1856

Dear Marx,

Herewith the article,[1] but you should read it over first. Today the office again prevented me from doing so myself.

Bazancourt[2] will be of some use—Bonaparte's Bat- rachomyomachia.[3] But Vol. I absolutely essential. I shall send you 6/- worth of stamps for it tomorrow, or rather, they are enclosed herewith.

I would advise you to pack your bags at once, taking such papers as are absolutely necessary. Then you can work here as well as in Scotland, at least on certain subjects. We could do Bazancourt ±[4] together.[5] Admittedly, you would have to do most of the work for, with business expanding rapidly, commerce is making such demands on me that there can be no thought of regular and sustained work. If you finished this thing here (1 article would of course suffice), you could always either do parliamentary articles here, or else take a trip to Scotland and get down to some hard work here on your return. Until the Pan-Slavism is finished I should be reluctant to saddle myself with

any other promises which I might eventually be unable to fulfil; but after all, your health is also a consideration and, as to that, I think I have something good for you—viz. light Bavarian beer and another dozen or so botdes of Bordeaux. Better, at all events—with a change of air—than HALF AND HALF, etc.

I may drop you another line tomorrow. Let me know what you decide to do.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ Between January and May 1856 Engels wrote a series of articles on Pan-Slavism for the New-York Daily Tribune, which did not print them. The manuscripts have not been preserved.—5, 14, 51, 68, 73, 81, 100
  2. ↑ Bazancourt, L'expédition de Crimée jusqu' à la prise de Sébastopol.
  3. ↑ Engels compares Bazancourt's description of the Crimean war to Bat- rachomyomachia (The Battle of the Frogs and Mice), an Ancient Greek anonymous mock-heroic poem parodying Homer's Iliad.— 51
  4. ↑ more or less
  5. ↑ Engels made excerpts from Bazancourt's book between June and September 1856. In the autumn of that year he summed up the results of his critical analysis in an article entitled 'Saint-Arnaud'. Marx sent the article to the American journal Putnam's Monthly, but the editors returned it unpublished.— 45, 51, 71, 73, 80, 93, 106, 124, 126, 128