Letter to Friedrich Engels, January 23, 1858

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 23 January 1858


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 23 January 1858

Dear Engels,

I have received: 1. Copies of the Guardian; 2. C ('Carabine', etc.[1] ). You have not told me whether you got my letter, together with an enclosure for Lupus, sent off a week ago today.[2]

Herewith a letter from Dana which you must return as it has not yet been answered. One disagreeable consequence so far as I am concerned is that I am already considerably in the fellows' debt, having miscalculated what was due to me and drawn a further amount after sending off 'Cannon'. 235 The PAY, by the by, isn't even A PENNY THE LINE.

As regards the new B articles Dana is asking for—and for me the main thing is to pay off as quickly as possible what I have overdrawn on Appleton, otherwise I shall be unable to draw anything on the Tribune and hence be stone broke—they are, with one exception, taken from the list you drew up. As regards that one exception—'THE HISTORY OF THE BENGAL REBELLION'—I suggest the most appropriate course would be tell Dana straight out it can't be done. How get hold of the sources at such short notice? Since it 'SHALL BE SENT AT ONCE' and must be 'AS BRIEF AS POSSIBLE', the work involved would be out of all proportion to the PAY and it would simply prevent us from getting on with the other articles. What is your opinion? The military side is the more important, but it seems to me that the whole, whether military or political, has not yet reached the stage where it could be 'sent AT ONCE'.

I cannot recall the MISTAKE IN THE BATTLE OF ALBUERA' to which Dana refers.[3]

Freiligrath writes to say that the great Ernst Dronke has arrived in London from Paris, having left the latter place for the first time on account of the attempted assassination.[4]

Salut.

Your

K. M.

There were some nice things from the Paris correspondent in The Manchester Guardian you sent me. How is business in Manchester? Everything seems to be going better than expected.

  1. ↑ On 22 January 1858 Marx made an entry in his notebook about the receipt from Engels and the despatch to New York of the second batch of 'C articles for The New American Cyclopaedia, in particular 'Carabine', 'Carabineers', 'Carcass', 'Carronade', 'Cartouche', 'Cartridge' and 'Case Shot' (see present edition, Vol. 18). The article 'Carabineers' was not published in the Cyclopaedia nor has the manuscript been preserved.—251
  2. ↑ See this volume, p. 250.
  3. ↑ At the end of his article 'Albuera' Engels noted that the siege of the French-held fortress of Badajos (Southwestern Spain) by the allied forces of Britain, Spain and Portugal was raised the day after their victory over the French at Albuera on 16 May 1811 (see present edition, Vol. 18, pp. 10-11). In fact the fortress was besieged by the allies three times during the Peninsular War between Britain and Napoleonic France. The first siege in May 1811 was lifted before the battle of Albuera because of the approaching French reserves. On 25 May, following the victory at Albuera, the allies resumed the siege but they were forced to raise it on 17 June. The allies laid siege to Badajos for the third time in March 1812 and took it on 6 April. As Engels pointed out in his letter to Marx on 18 February 1858 (see this volume, p. 267), the inaccuracy in the article 'Albuera' is accounted for by a mistake in one of the sources he used.—251, 252, 267
  4. ↑ Marx refers to an attempt on the life of Napoleon III by the Italian revolutionary Felice Orsini on 14 January 1858. Orsini hoped thus to give an impetus to revolutionary actions in Europe and activate the struggle for Italy's unification. The attempt failed and Orsini was executed on 13 March of that year.—251, 255, 256, 257, 266, 271, 289