Helen Macfarlane: A Feminist, Revolutionary Journalist, and Philosopher in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England

Helen Macfarlane, a young British woman, was living in Vienna when she was radicalized by the 1848 Revolution. On returning to England in 1850, she became a journalist for the radical wing of the Chartist movement. The Chartists received support from such luminaries as Karl Marx and Fredrich Engles; the latter had written on the movement’s political significance. It was Marx who described Macfarlane as the most original writer in the Chartist press. Macfarlane was the first English translator of The Communist Manifesto. Her original translation is included in this edition. She is also the first of the British to comment, critically and extensively, on the revolutionary implications of Hegel’s philosophy. After having been hidden for a century her stature as a revolutionary, writer, and feminist emerges in David Black’s seminal work. With diligent research into her life and work, Black, in Helen Macfarlane: A Feminist, Revolutionary Journalist, and Philosopher in Mid-19th Century England, recreates her intellectual and political world at a key turning point in European history. This work also includes Macfarlane’s original translation of The Communist Manifesto.