The Frock-Coated Communist
The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Published:29th Apr '10
Should be back in stock very soon
Friedrich Engels is one of the most attractive and contradictory figures of the nineteenth century. Born to a prosperous mercantile family in west Germany, he spent his career working in the Manchester cotton industry, riding to the Cheshire hounds, and enjoying the comfortable, middle-class life of a Victorian gentleman. Yet Engels was also the co-founder of international communism - the philosophy which in the 20th century came to control one third of the human race. He was the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, a ruthless party tactician, and the man who sacrificed his best years so Karl Marx could write Das Kapital. Tristram Hunt relishes the diversity and exuberance of Engels's era: how one of the great bon viveurs of Victorian Britain reconciled his raucous personal life with this uncompromising political philosophy.
Beautifully written and consistently engaging * Independent *
An excellent book ... Hunt has a mastery of 19th-century British culture and European political thought -- Robert Service * Sunday Times *
Thoughtful and engaging * Telegraph Review *
- Winner of Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography 2010
ISBN: 9780141021409
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 21mm
Weight: 343g
464 pages