Jenny Julia Eleanor "Tussy" Marx (1855–1898), also known as Eleanor Marx Aveling, was the English-born youngest daughter of Karl Marx

Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...

. She was herself a socialist activist, who sometimes worked as a literary translator. Involved in an unhappy personal relationship with prominent British atheist Edward Aveling

Edward Aveling

Edward Bibbins Aveling was a prominent English biology instructor and popular spokesman for Darwinian evolution and atheism. He later met and moved in with Eleanor Marx, the youngest daughter of Karl Marx and became a socialist activist...

, she committed suicide by poison at the age of 43.

Early years

Eleanor Marx was born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 on 16 January 1855, the sixth child and fourth daughter of Marx and his wife Jenny von Westphalen

Jenny von Westphalen

Baroness Johanna Bertha Julie "Jenny" von Westphalen was the wife of the philosopher Karl Marx. They became engaged in 1836 and married in 1843. They had six children.- Background :...

. She was called "Tussy" from a young age. She showed an early interest in politics, even writing to political figures during her childhood. The hanging of the Manchester Martyrs

Manchester Martyrs

The Manchester Martyrs – William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O'Brien – were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, an organisation dedicated to ending British rule in Ireland. They were executed for the murder of a police officer in Manchester, England, in 1867, during...

when she was twelve, for example, horrified her and shaped her life-long sympathy for the Fenian

Fenian

The Fenians , both the Fenian Brotherhood and Irish Republican Brotherhood , were fraternal organisations dedicated to the establishment of an independent Irish Republic in the 19th and early 20th century. The name "Fenians" was first applied by John O'Mahony to the members of the Irish republican...

s. Her father's story-telling also inspired an interest in literature in her, she could recite passages by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 at the age of three. By her teenage years this love of Shakespeare led to the formation of the 'Dogberry Club' at which she, her family and the family of Clara Collet

Clara Collet

Clara Collet was pivotal in effecting many reforms which greatly improved working conditions and pay for women during the early part of the twentieth century...

, all recited Shakespeare whilst her father watched.

At the age of sixteen, Eleanor became her father's secretary

Secretary

A secretary, or administrative assistant, is a person whose work consists of supporting management, including executives, using a variety of project management, communication & organizational skills. These functions may be entirely carried out to assist one other employee or may be for the benefit...

 and accompanied him around the world to socialist conferences. A year later, she fell in love with Hippolyte Lissagaray, a journalist and member of the Paris Commune

Paris Commune

The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...

, who had fled to London after the Commune's suppression. Although he agreed with the man politically, Karl Marx disapproved of the relationship because of the age gap between the two, Lissagaray being 34 years old. Eleanor then moved away from home to Brighton

Brighton

Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...

 working as a schoolteacher.

A year later she helped Lissagaray write History of the Commune of 1871, and translated it into English. Her father liked the book but was still disapproving of his daughter's relationship with its author. By 1880 Karl changed his view of the situation, allowing her to marry him. However, by then Eleanor herself was having second thoughts. She terminated the relationship in 1882.

In the early 1880s, she had to nurse her aging parents, but her mother died in December 1881 and her father in March 1883. He gave her the task of taking care of the publication of his unfinished manuscripts and the English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 version of his main work, Capital

Das Kapital

Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...

.

Political career

In 1884, Eleanor joined the Social Democratic Federation

Social Democratic Federation

The Social Democratic Federation was established as Britain's first organised socialist political party by H. M. Hyndman, and had its first meeting on June 7, 1881. Those joining the SDF included William Morris, George Lansbury and Eleanor Marx. However, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's long-term...

 (SDF) led by Henry Hyndman

Henry Hyndman

Henry Mayers Hyndman was an English writer and politician, and the founder of the Social Democratic Federation and the National Socialist Party.-Early years:...

 and was elected to its executive. During her work in the SDF, she met Edward Aveling

Edward Aveling

Edward Bibbins Aveling was a prominent English biology instructor and popular spokesman for Darwinian evolution and atheism. He later met and moved in with Eleanor Marx, the youngest daughter of Karl Marx and became a socialist activist...

, with whom she would spend the rest of her life. In the same year, a split of the organisation led her to leave it and found the rival Socialist League

Socialist League (UK, 1885)

The Socialist League was an early revolutionary socialist organisation in the United Kingdom. The organisation began as a dissident offshoot of the Social Democratic Federation of Henry Hyndman at the end of 1884. Never an ideologically harmonious group, by the 1890s the group had turned from...

. The split had two root causes: personality problems, as Hyndman was accused of leading the SDF in a dictatorial fashion, and disagreements on the issue of internationalism. In this point Hyndman was accused by Marx among others of nationalist tendencies. He was, for example, opposed to Marx's idea of sending delegates to the French Workers' Party

French Workers' Party

The Parti Ouvrier Français was the first Marxist party in France, created in 1880 by Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, Marx's son-in-law...

 calling the proposal a "family manoeuvre", since Eleanor Marx' sister Laura

Laura Marx

Jenny Laura Marx was the second daughter of Karl Marx and Jenny von Westphalen. In 1868 she married Paul Lafargue. As an elderly couple, the two committed suicide together in 1911....

 and her husband Paul Lafargue

Paul Lafargue

Paul Lafargue was a French revolutionary Marxist socialist journalist, literary critic, political writer and activist; he was Karl Marx's son-in-law, having married his second daughter Laura. His best known work is The Right to Be Lazy...

 were members of that party. Therefore, both Marx and Aveling became founding members of the Socialist League, whose most prominent member was William Morris

William Morris

William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

.

Marx regularly wrote a regular column called "Record of the Revolutionary International Movement" for the Socialist League's monthly newspaper, Commonweal.

In 1884, Marx also met Clementina Black, a painter and trade unionist, and became involved in the Women's Trade Union League

Women's Trade Union League

The Women's Trade Union League was a U.S. organization of both working class and more well-off women formed in 1903 to support the efforts of women to organize labor unions and to eliminate sweatshop conditions...

. She would go on to support numerous strike

Strike action

Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...

s including the Bryant & May strike of 1888 and the London Dock Strike of 1889

London Dock Strike of 1889

The London Dock Strike was an industrial dispute involving dock workers in the Port of London. It broke out on 14 August 1889, and resulted in a victory for the strikers and established strong trade unions amongst London dockers, one of which became the nationally important Dock, Wharf, Riverside...

. She helped organise the Gasworkers' Union

GMB Union

The GMB is a general trade union in the United Kingdom, and has more than 600,000 members. Its members are drawn from many sectors, with particular strength amongst manual workers in local government and the health service...

 and wrote numerous books and articles.

In 1885, she helped organize the International Socialist Congress in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. The following year, she toured the United States along with Aveling and the German socialist Wilhelm Liebknecht

Wilhelm Liebknecht

Wilhelm Martin Philipp Christian Ludwig Liebknecht was a German social democrat and a principal founder of the SPD. His political career was a pioneering project combining Marxist revolutionary theory with practical, legal political activity...

, raising money for the Social Democratic Party of Germany

Social Democratic Party of Germany

The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

.

By the late 1880s, the Socialist League was deeply divided between those advocating political action and its opponents — who were themselves split between those like William Morris who felt that parliamentary campaigns represented inevitable compromises and corruptions, and an anarchist

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

 wing which opposed all electoral politics as a matter of principle. Marx and Aveling, as firm advocates of the principle of participation in political campaigns, found themselves in an uncomfortable minority in the party. At the 4th Annual Conference of the Socialist League the Bloomsbury branch, to which Marx and Aveling belonged, moved that a meeting of all socialist bodies should be called to discuss the formation of a united organisation. This resolution was voted down by a substantial margin, as was another put forward by the same branch in support of contesting seats in both local and parliamentary elections. Moreover, the Socialist League at this occasion suspended the 80 members of the Bloomsbury branch on the grounds that the group had put up candidates jointly with the SDF, against the policy of the party. The Bloomsbury branch thus exited the Socialist League for a new, albeit brief, independent existence as the Bloomsbury Socialist Society.

In 1893, Keir Hardie

Keir Hardie

James Keir Hardie, Sr. , was a Scottish socialist and labour leader, and was the first Independent Labour Member of Parliament elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom...

 founded the Independent Labour Party

Independent Labour Party

The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...

 (ILP), Marx attended the founding conference as an observer, while Aveling was a delegate. Their goal of shifting the ILP's positions towards Marxism failed, however, as the party remained under a strong Christian socialist

Christian socialism

Christian socialism generally refers to those on the Christian left whose politics are both Christian and socialist and who see these two philosophies as being interrelated. This category can include Liberation theology and the doctrine of the social gospel...

 influence. In 1897, Marx and Aveling re-joined the Social Democratic Federation, like most former members of the Socialist League.

Involvement in theatre

In the 1880s, Eleanor Marx became more interested in theatre and took up acting. She believed in the art as a socialist and feminist tool. She also translated various literary works, including the first English translation of Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...

's Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life...

. She also translated Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...

's The Lady from the Sea

The Lady from the Sea

The Lady from the Sea is a play written in 1888 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.Kvinnan från havet is a ballet by choreographer Birgit Cullberg, and based on Ibsen's play...

and An Enemy of the People

An Enemy of the People

An Enemy of the People is an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen wrote it in response to the public outcry against his play Ghosts, which at that time was considered scandalous...

. In 1886, she performed a groundbreaking if critically unsuccessful reading of Ibsen's A Doll's House

A Doll's House

A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month....

 in London, with herself as Nora Helmer, Aveling as Torvald Helmer, and George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

 as Krogstad.

Death and legacy

In 1898, Eleanor discovered that the ailing Edward Aveling had secretly married a young actress, to whom he remained committed. Aveling's illness seemed to her to be terminal, and Eleanor was deeply depressed by the faithlessness of the man she loved.

On 31 March 1898, Eleanor sent the maid to the local chemist

Chemist

A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...

 with a note to which she signed the initials of the man the chemist knew as "Dr. Aveling," asking for "chloroform

Chloroform

Chloroform is an organic compound with formula CHCl3. It is one of the four chloromethanes. The colorless, sweet-smelling, dense liquid is a trihalomethane, and is considered somewhat hazardous...

 and a small quantity of prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide) for her dog." Eleanor received the chemicals and sent the maid back to the chemists to return a receipt book sent with the drugs. She then retired to her room, wrote two brief suicide notes, undressed, got into bed, and swallowed the poison.

The maid discovered Eleanor in bed, scarcely breathing, when she returned. A doctor was called for but Eleanor had expired by the time he arrived. A post mortem examination determined the cause of death to be poisoning by prussic acid. A subsequent inquest cleared Aveling of criminal wrongdoing, but he was widely reviled throughout the socialist community as having caused Eleanor to take her life.

A funeral was held on 5 April 1898, attended by a large throng of mourners. Speeches were made by Aveling, Robert Banner, Eduard Bernstein

Eduard Bernstein

Eduard Bernstein was a German social democratic theoretician and politician, a member of the SPD, and the founder of evolutionary socialism and revisionism.- Life :...

, Pete Curran, Henry Hyndman, and Will Thorne

Will Thorne

William James Thorne CBE , known as Will Thorne, was a British trade unionist, activist and one of the first Labour Members of Parliament .-Early years:...

. Following the memorial, Eleanor Marx's body was taken to Woking

Woking

Woking is a large town and civil parish that shares its name with the surrounding local government district, located in the west of Surrey, UK. It is part of the Greater London Urban Area and the London commuter belt, with frequent trains and a journey time of 24 minutes to Waterloo station....

 and cremated

Cremation

Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....

. An urn containing her ashes was subsequently kept safe by a succession of left wing organizations, including the Social Democratic Federation, the British Socialist Party

British Socialist Party

The British Socialist Party was a Marxist political organisation established in Great Britain in 1911. Following a protracted period of factional struggle, in 1916 the party's anti-war forces gained decisive control of the party and saw the defection of its pro-war Right Wing...

, and the Communist Party of Great Britain

Communist Party of Great Britain

The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...

, before finally being buried alongside the remains of Karl Marx and other family members at Highgate Cemetery

Highgate Cemetery

Highgate Cemetery is a cemetery located in north London, England. It is designated Grade I on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. It is divided into two parts, named the East and West cemetery....

 in London in 1956.

On 9 September 2008 a blue commemorative English Heritage plaque was placed on the house on Jews Walk, Sydenham

Sydenham

Sydenham is an area and electoral ward in the London Borough of Lewisham; although some streets towards Crystal Palace Park, Forest Hill and Penge are outside the ward and in the London Borough of Bromley, and some streets off Sydenham Hill are in the London Borough of Southwark. Sydenham was in...

, south-east London, where Eleanor spent the last few years of her life.

Writings

• The Factory Hell. With Edward Aveling. London: Socialist League Office, 1885.
• The Woman Question. With Edward Aveling. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1886.
• Shelley's Socialism: Two Lectures. London: privately printed, 1888.
• The Working Class Movement in America. With Edward Aveling. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1891.
• The Working Class Movement in England: A Brief Historical Sketch Originally Written for the "Voles lexicon" Edited by Emmanuel Wurm. London: Twentieth Century Press, 1896.

Translations

• Edward Bernstein, Ferdinand Lassalle as a Social Reformer. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. 1893.
• Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners. London: W.W. Gibbings, 1892.
• Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House.
• Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People.
• Henrik Ibsen, The Pillars of Society and Other Plays. London: W. Scott, 1888.
• Henrik Ibsen, The Lady from the Sea. London: Fisher T. Unwin, 1890.
• Henrik Ibsen, The Wild Duck: A Drama in FIve Acts. Boston: W.H. Baker, 1890.
• Hippolyte-Prosper-Oliver Lissagaray, History of the Commune of 1871. New York: International Publishing Co., 1898.
• George Plechanoff [Georgii Plekhanov], Anarchism and Socialism.

Further reading

• Yvonne Kapp, Eleanor Marx: Volume 1: Family Life, 1855-1883. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1972. Also: New York: Pantheon Books, 1976.
• Yvonne Kapp, Eleanor Marx, Volume 2: The Crowded Years, 1884-1898. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976. Also: New York: Pantheon Books, 1976.
• Olga Meier and Faith Evans (eds.), The Daughters of Karl Marx: Family Correspondence, 1866-1898. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.
• John Stokes, Eleanor Marx (1855-1898): Life, Work, Contacts. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.
• Chūshichi Tsuzuki, The Life of Eleanor Marx, 1855-1898: A Socialist Tragedy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.

External links

• Eleanor Marx Internet Archive, at Marxists Internet Archive
  Marxists Internet Archive
  Marxists Internet Archive is a volunteer based non-profit organization that maintains a multi-lingual Internet archive of Marxist writers and other similar authors...
  
  .
• Eleanor Marx biography on Women of Brighton site