Karl Marx: His Life and Environment
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.jpg) Cover of the 1959 edition | |
| Author | Isaiah Berlin |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Karl Marx |
| Publisher | Thornton Butterworth |
Publication date | 1939 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 222 (1995 edition) |
| ISBN | 978-0195103267 |
Karl Marx: His Life and Environment is a 1939 intellectual biography[1] of the philosopher, social scientist, economist and revolutionary Karl Marx by the historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin.[2]
In a 1995 interview with Michael Ignatieff, first broadcast on BBC Two in November 1997, after his death, Berlin described how he came to write the book:
When I was first asked to do it…I read far more Marx that will ever be good for anyone else to read again…. He was pompous, heavy, highly intelligent, made heavy German jokes, quite good, rather a bully, of a rather impressive kind. You felt you were in the presence of an intellectually powerful figure who wanted to dictate to one, didn’t terribly want to know what one thought, wanted you to know what he thought.[3]
The book charts the chief phases of Marx’ life, and renders his ideas ‘with a sympathetic grasp both of it subject’s motives and his limitations’.[4]
The book had five English editions and was translated in many languages, among which German (1959),[5] Italian (1967),[6] Dutch (1968)[7] and Spanish (1973).[8]
