This book is the first of its kind on Marx in English. It not only contains reproductions of virtually every picture of Marx and his family in existence, but is illustrated by a uniquely wide set of quotations, from his early school essays and attempts at romantic poetry to his mature works and vast correspondence with Engels. This material is linked by a lucid text which narrates the facts of Marx's life and explains the significance of each stage of his intellectual output and political activity.
No biography before has portrayed in such detail Marx's relationship with his mother and father, studied here with generous quotations from their letters as well as his own. Marx's relationship with his own family and friends, the often cruel hardship of his life in London, the apparent contradictions in his work, all are studied for the light they throw on a man whose influence changed the course of history - of whom, when he was only twenty-four, a friend wrote: 'Imagine Rousseau, Voltaire, Holbach, Lessing, Heine and Hegel united in one person, and I say united, not just thrown together - then you've got Dr Marx.'