– (Kevin B. Anderson, co-editor of Marx on Suicide)
David Black has rendered British social history – and the history of Chartism in particular – as well as the history of socialist ideas in Britain a distinct service by devoting a book-length study to this remarkable woman.
– (Victorian Studies)
In Helen Macfarlane: A Feminist Revolutionary Journalist and Philosopher in Mid-Eighteenth Century England, David Black has done astute historical detective work to rescue from erasure a key figure in socialist history. Under the alias of “Howard Morton,” Helen Macfarlane wrote the first English translation of The Communist Manifesto for the magazine The Red Republican. An active member of mid-nineteenth century British socialist circles, she contributed to the direction of radical dissent and the legacy of Chartism. Rich in detail, Black’s book maps out some of the major debates in which Macfarlane was involved and offers a fascinating archive for anyone interested in the prehistory of British Hegelian thought.
– (Rosemary Hennessey, author of Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism)