ABC Wednesday: "E" is for Engels & equality at Chetham's Library

ABC Wednesday comes around to the letter "E" and we visit one of Friedrich Engels' Manchester haunts. Chetham's Library is part of Chetham's School which was founded for the deserving poor by wealthy merchant Humphrey Chetham (1580-1653). Chetham's Library is the oldest surviving public library in the English speaking world.

Friedrich Engels worked at the family factory in Weaste, Salford and lived here for 20 years, often joined by his friend and fellow German, Karl Marx. They researched together in Chetham's Library. Engels wrote The Making of the English Working Class in 1844 and it included much on industrial Manchester, and the pair jointly wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848), On the Question of Free Trade (1848) and England's 17th Century Revolution (1850).

I was fortunate enough to be shown a selection of the actual books Marx and Engels used for their research and was even allowed to thumb through them all. I could literally feel the history...