# The Frock-Coated Communist

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/tristram-hunt/the-frock-coated-communist/9780141926865

JSON version (same data): https://www.bookquiver.com/tristram-hunt/the-frock-coated-communist/9780141926865.json

![The Frock-Coated Communist](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin/tristram-hunt/the-frock-coated-communist_978-01-4192-686-5.jpg?v=2026-04-23%2023%3A07%3A10)

- Book: [The Frock-Coated Communist](https://www.bookquiver.com/tristram-hunt/the-frock-coated-communist) ([The Frock-Coated Communist.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/tristram-hunt/the-frock-coated-communist.md))
- Authors: [Tristram Hunt](https://www.bookquiver.com/tristram-hunt)
- Publisher: Penguin
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-01-4192-686-5
- Published: 2009-04-30
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: E-book

## Description

Friedrich Engels is one of the most attractive and contradictory figures of the nineteenth century. Born to a prosperous mercantile family in west Germany, he spent his career working in the Manchester cotton industry, riding to the Cheshire hounds, and enjoying the comfortable, middle-class life of a Victorian gentleman. Yet Engels was also the co-founder of international communism - the philosophy which in the 20th century came to control one third of the human race. He was the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, a ruthless party tactician, and the man who sacrificed his best years so Karl Marx could write Das Kapital. Tristram Hunt relishes the diversity and exuberance of Engels's era: how one of the great bon viveurs of Victorian Britain reconciled his raucous personal life with this uncompromising political philosophy. Set against the backdrop of revolutionary Europe and industrializing England - of Manchester mills, Paris barricades, and East End strikes - it is a story of devoted friendship, class compromise, ideological struggle, and family betrayal.