Description
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.
About the Author
Dr Tristram Hunt is Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum and one of Britain's best-known historians. He served as MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central from 2010 to 2017 (when he led the campaign to save the Wedgwood Museum) and as Shadow Secretary of State for Education between October 2013 and September 2015. He was a senior lecturer in British history at Queen Mary, University of London, and has written numerous series for radio and television. His previous books include The English Civil War At First Hand, The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, Ten Cities that Made an Empire and Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City, between them published in more than a dozen languages.
Reviews
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 *
Awards
Winner of Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography 2010.
Book Information
ISBN 9780141021409
Author Tristram Hunt
Format Paperback
Page Count 464
Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 343g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 21mm
About the Author
Dr Tristram Hunt is Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum and one of Britain's best-known historians. He served as MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central from 2010 to 2017 (when he led the campaign to save the Wedgwood Museum) and as Shadow Secretary of State for Education between October 2013 and September 2015. He was a senior lecturer in British history at Queen Mary, University of London, and has written numerous series for radio and television. His previous books include The English Civil War At First Hand, The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, Ten Cities that Made an Empire and Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City, between them published in more than a dozen languages.
Reviews
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 *
Awards
Winner of Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography 2010.
Book Information
ISBN 9780141021409
Author Tristram Hunt
Format Paperback
Page Count 464
Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 343g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 21mm
