Does the world really need another Marx biography? As a fan of the man as thinker and (to some extent) as historical figure, normally my answer would always be “yes.” However, recent years have seen a spate of new Marx and Engels biographies that have been thorough and substantive on all aspects of their lives.

Tristram Hunt’s irreverent but sympathetic biography of Engels (Marx’s General, 2009); Francis Wheen’s fine overview of Marx’s life and thought (Karl Marx, 2000); Mary Gabriel’s brilliant study of the intersection of the private lives and public convictions of the whole Marx-Engels clan, including children and domestic servant (Love and Capital, 2011) — each have provided well-researched twenty-first century retrospectives on the lives of the great revolutionaries.

Add to that the biographies I would consider the standard classics from the previous generation — David McLellan’s Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (first edition 1973, now on the fourth) and J. D. Hunley’s underappreciated study of Friedrich Engels (The Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels: A Reinterpretation, 1991) — and it becomes a truly daunting task to add much new content to our view of either man.