Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on Literature and Art

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels on Literature and Art is an accomplished revision of a major anthology of their writings on aesthetic matters. Distinguished by its careful thematic grouping of the appropriate works, and prefaced by a masterly essay by Stefan Morawski, the volume is here republished for the first time in over thirty years. For this new edition, Macdonald Daly has added an introductory “Short History of Marxist Aesthetics”, to situate Marx and Engels in the later history of the field, and to shine the light of later Marxist theory on the original anthology. He has also systematically revised, updated and amended Baxandall and Morawski’s explanatory notes, and substantially enlarged and corrected their original index. By these means, what was once the standard English text of Marx and Engels’ aesthetic reflections now returns to its rightful place as the first in the definitive multi-volume series, Documents on Marxist Aesthetics. “In the crucial but problematic field of Marxist aesthetics, Morawski is surely the greatest living authority. Morawski’s study of Marx’s own aesthetic pronouncements appears as the preface to the valuable new collection of Marx and Engels’ writings On Literature and Art … It may be considered definitive.” Fredric Jameson “… the best epitome of Marxist aesthetics in English, and so far as I know, in any language.” Melvin Rader, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism