Eleanor Marx

Jenny Julia Eleanor Marx (16 January 1855 – 31 March 1898), sometimes called Eleanor Aveling and known to her family as Tussy, was the English-born youngest daughter of Karl Marx. She was herself a socialist activist who sometimes worked as a literary translator. In March 1898, after discovering that her partner Edward Aveling had secretly married the previous year, she poisoned herself at the age of 43.

Biography

Early years

Eleanor Marx was born in London on 16 January 1855, the sixth child and fourth daughterBrodie, Fran
Eleanor Marx
in ''Workers' Liberty''. Retrieved 23 April 2007. of Karl Marx and his wife Jenny von Westphalen. She was called "Tussy" by her family from a young age. She showed an early interest in politics, even writing to political figures during her childhood.Marx Family
in '' Encyclopedia of Marxism. Retrieved 23 April 2007.'' The hanging of the " Manchester Martyrs" when she was twelve, for example, horrified her and shaped her lifelong sympathy for the Fenians. Her father's story-telling also inspired an interest in literature, she could recite passages by William Shakespeare at the age of three.Eleanor Marx
in ''Spartacus Educational''. Retrieved 23 April 2007. 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, all recited Shakespeare whilst her father watched.

While Karl Marx was writing his major work ''Das Kapital'' in the family home, his youngest daughter Eleanor played in his study. Marx invented and narrated a story for Eleanor based on an antihero called Hans Röckle. Eleanor reports that this was one of her favourite childhood stories. The story is significant because it offered Eleanor lessons through an allegory of Marx's critique of political economy which he was writing in ''Das Kapital''. As an adult, Eleanor was involved in translating and editing volumes of ''Das Kapital''. She also edited Marx's lectures '' Value, Price and Profit'' and '' Wage Labour and Capital'', which were based on the same material, into books. Eleanor Marx's biographer, Rachel Holmes, writes: "Tussy's childhood intimacy with arxwhilst he wrote the first volume of ''Das Kapital'' provided her with a thorough grounding in British economic, political and social history. Tussy and ''Capital'' grew up together".

At the age of sixteen, Eleanor became her father's secretary and accompanied him around the world to socialist conferences. A year later, she fell in love with Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, a journalist and participant of the Paris Commune, 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. In May 1873 Eleanor moved away from home to Brighton working as a schoolteacher; she lived at 6 Vernon Terrace in the Montpelier suburb, returning to London in September 1873.

In 1876 she helped Lissagaray write ''History of the Commune of 1871'', and later 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 ageing parents, but her mother died in December 1881. From August 1882 she also cared for her young nephew Jean Longuet for several months, easing the burden on her elder sister, Jenny Longuet, who died in January 1883 of bladder cancer. Her father died two months later, in March 1883. After this, Eleanor and Edward Aveling, overseen by Friedrich Engels