54. Karl Marx. To the Editors of Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly[284]

London, N. W., September 23, 1871

Mesdames:

I have the honor to send you, for insertion in your Weekly—if you judge the contribution sufficiently interesting for your readers — a short relation of my daughter Jenny on the persecutions she and her sisters, during their stay at Bagnères de Luchon (Pyrenees),(1) had to undergo at the hands of the French Government. This tragico-comical episode seems to me characteristic of the Republic-Thiers.

The news of my death was concocted at Paris by the Avenir libéral,(2) a Bonapartist paper.

Since Sunday last a private Conference of the delegates of the International Workingmen's Association is sitting at London. The proceedings will terminate to-day.

With my best thanks for the highly interesting papers you had the kindness to send me,

I have the honor, Mesdames, to remain,

Yours most sincerely,

Karl Marx

First published in the Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, No. 23/75, October 21, 1871

Reproduced from the weekly

FROM THE PREPARATORY MATERIALS

Endnotes

[284] This is Marx's covering letter to that of his daughter Jenny (see this volume, pp. 622-32). It was presumably written in reply to a request by the editors of Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly for an explanation of the rumours about Marx's death circulated by the bourgeois press.

(1) See this volume, pp. 622-32.— Ed.

(2) "Paris, le 4 septembre 1871. Dernières Nouvelles", L'Avenir libéral, No. 376, September 5, 1871.— Ed