Edward Aveling was an employee for whom from 1876 to 1878?
Edward Aveling Edward Bibbins Aveling ( 29 November 1849 – 2 August 1898 ) was a prominent English biology instructor and popular spokesman for Darwinian evolution , atheism , and socialism . Aveling was the author of numerous books and pamphlets and was a founding member of the Socialist League and the Independent Labour Party . For many years he was the partner of Eleanor Marx , the youngest daughter of Karl Marx . Biography . Early years . Aveling was born on 29 November 1849 in Stoke Newington , the fifth of eight children of Rev . Thomas William Baxter Aveling ( 1815–1884 ) , a Congregationalist minister , and his wife , Mary Ann ( d . 1877 ) , daughter of Thomas Goodall , farmer and innkeeper , of Wisbech , Cambridgeshire . Aveling attended Taunton School , and in 1867 began to study medicine at University College London . He graduated with a BSc degree in zoology in 1870 . Aveling began teaching biology and lecturing in science at Kings College London but was unable to advance due to his atheism and avowed leftist views . He subsequently lectured on anatomy and biology at the London Hospital until 1882 . On 30 July 1872 , Aveling married the heiress Isabel Campbell Frank ( 22 November 1849 – 12 September 1892 ) , but the marriage lasted only two years before they separated amicably . According to Aveling , the cause of the split was that Isabel could not abide his atheist views , although there were rumours that he had married her for her money . They did not divorce and the marriage ended with her death . From 1872 to 1876 Aveling was a teacher of elementary physics and botany at the North London Collegiate School for Girls . In 1880 , Aveling delivered over a hundred freethought lectures and was made a vice-president of the National Secular Society . He edited the secular humanist magazine , The Freethinker when its founding editor George William Foote was imprisoned for blasphemy in 1883 . Political career . In November 1882 he was elected to represent Westminster on the London School Board . In 1884 , Aveling became the partner of Eleanor Tussy Marx , the daughter of Karl Marx , and thus was thrust into the inner circle of British socialism . Later in 1884 , Aveling and Eleanor were both elected to the executive council of the Social Democratic Federation . This position proved temporary , because the couple separated from the SDF at the end of the year along with William Morris and Belfort Bax in the acrimonious split which formed the Socialist League . In 1884 , Frederick Engels enlisted Aveling to help in translating the first volume of Karl Marxs book Das Kapital . Aveling also achieved some success as a playwright under the pen-name Alec Nelson . In the autumn of 1886 , Aveling and Eleanor Marx toured the United States , lecturing on behalf of the Socialist Labor Party . After their return , they wrote a book for British readers detailing the situation of the left-wing political movement and trade unions in the US , which they said was populated by unconscious socialists , people who shared socialist values but disclaimed socialist ideas . Aveling and Marx wrote : The mass of American Workers had scarcely any more conception of the meaning of Socialism than had their betters . They also had been grievously misled by capitalist papers and capitalist economists and preachers . Hence it came to pass that after most of our meetings we were met by Knights of Labour , Central Labour Union men , and members of other working-class organisations , who told us that they , entering the place antagonists to Socialism as they fancied , had discovered that for a long time past they had been holding its ideas . During his time in the Socialist League Aveling wrote and translated various socialist texts but nonetheless remained personally unpopular in the movement , the object of a steady steam of gossip and accusations . In August 1888 , the branch to which Aveling and Marx belonged separated from the anarchist-dominated Socialist League in favour of an independent existence as the Bloomsbury Socialist Society . After leaving the Socialist League , Aveling became active in the Gasworkers Union , for whom he served as an auditor . Aveling was a founding member and was elected to the National Administrative Council of the Independent Labour Party by the 1893 Conference which established the organisation . He left that group to rejoin the Marxist Social Democratic Federation in 1896 , despite his long-standing personal and political quarrel with SDF leader Henry Hyndman . Playwright . Under the pen name Alec Nelson , Aveling wrote several successful plays , including an adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter that premiered in London in May 1888 . By August , he was supervising the mounting of three different plays in New York , Chicago , and , in the words of Engels , God knows where besides . Writings on science . From his standpoint as a comparative anatomist Aveling easily accepted Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection . As an atheist he eagerly promoted the division between some evolutionists and some Christians . His colourful writings on Darwinism were widely read by the general public . However , some of the arguments that he constructed himself were not widely accepted amongst the scientific community ; he says , for example , that the special creation of a species of animal or plant is not thinkable because it would contravene the principle that both matter and energy are conserved . Later life , death , and legacy . In 1897 , Aveling left Marx and on 8 June that year secretly married an actress , Eva Frye , using his pen-name Alec Nelson . He returned to Marx in September when he was suffering from kidney disease . After nursing him for some time , Eleanor Marx committed suicide mainly due to his infidelity . A coroners inquest delivered a verdict of suicide while in a state of temporary insanity , clearing Aveling of criminal wrongdoing , but he was widely reviled throughout the socialist community as having caused Eleanor to take her life . It has even been suggested that Aveling might have murdered her . Aveling died four months later , on 2 August 1898 , in Battersea of kidney disease . He was 48 . His body was cremated at Woking Crematorium , Surrey , three days later . Despite his prominence as a member of the fledgling British Marxist movement , no representatives of the Socialist or labour movements were present at the funeral due to the widely held belief that he was responsible for Eleanor Marxs death . Aveling was also disliked by many of his contemporaries for his tendency to borrow money from everyone . A biographer of Eleanor wrote in 1976 : The truth is that in moral terms Aveling presented something akin to an optical illusion : looked at in one light , he could be seen as feckless , happy-go-lucky but fundamentally sound ; in another , as an unmitigated scoundrel . What , however , could not escape notice from any angle was his infinite propensity to borrow money , which age could not wither nor — more surprisingly — custom stale . He might be cheated...so that resigning from the Secular Society he was loaded with debt . Yet this hardly accounts for his habit of borrowing from the rich , the poor and the positively indigent for trifling amounts — though sometimes cleaning them out — since he never at any time — and this in an age of ostentatious spenders.. . — lived in a style above that of any other middle-class socialist who had neither business interests nor inherited wealth . * * * It is not uncommon to come across individuals from whose company and a small sum of money one simultaneously parts . This compulsion to borrow is not easy to explain in those who are neither on their beam ends nor aspire to high living . Although he had numerous relationships with women , as far as is known , Aveling had no children . Publications by Edward Aveling . Writings . - Why I Dare Not Be a Christian . London : Freethought Publishing Co. , n.d . [ 1881 ] . - Irreligion of Science . London : Freethought Publishing Co. , n.d . [ 1881 ] . - The Wickedness of God . London : Freethought Publishing Co. , n.d . [ 1881 ] . - The Creed of an Atheist . London : Freethought Publishing Co. , n.d . [ 1881 ] . - The Students Darwin . London : Freethought Publishing Co. , 1881 . - The Plays of Shakspere.. . : The Substance of Four Lectures Delivered at the Hall of Science , London . London : Freethought Publishing Co. , n.d . [ 1881 ] . - Biological Discoveries and Problems . London : Freethought Publishing Co. , n.d . [ c . 1881 ] . - God Dies , Nature Remains . London : Freethought Publishing Co. , n.d . [ c . 1881 ] . - Science and Secularism . London : Freethought Publishing Co. , 1882 . - Botanical Tables : For the Use of Students . London : Freethought Publishing Co. , n.d . [ 1882 ] . - A Godless Life : The Happiest and Most Useful . London , A . Besant and C . Bradlaugh , 1882 . - Science and Religion . London , A . Besant and C . Bradlaugh , n.d . [ 1882 ] . - On Superstition . London , A . Besant and C . Bradlaugh , n.d . [ c . 1882 ] . - The Borderland Between Living and Non-Living Things : A Lecture Delivered Before the Sunday Lecture Society , on Sunday Afternoon , 5 November 1882.. . London : Sunday Lecture Society , 1882 . - General Biology : Theoretical and Practical . London : n.p. , 1882 . - The Religious Views of Charles Darwin . London : Freethought Publishing Company , 1883 . - The Darwinian Theory . London : Progressive Publishing Company , n.d . [ c . 1883 ] . - Christianity and Capitalism . With Charles L Marson and Stewart D Headlam . London : Modern Press , 1884 . - The Curse of Capital . London : Freethought Publishing Co. , 1884 . - The Darwinian Theory : Its Meaning , Difficulties , Evidence , History . London : Progressive Publishing Co. , 1884 . - The Origin of Man . London : Progressive Publishing Co. , 1884 . - The Factory Hell . with Eleanor Marx Aveling . London : Socialist League Office , 1885 . - Monkeys , Apes and Men . London : Progressive Publishing Co. , 1885 . - The Woman Question . With Eleanor Marx Aveling . London : Swan Sonnenschein & Co. , 1886 . - Chemistry of the Non-Metallics . London : J . Hughes , 1886 . - Natural Philosophy for London University Matriculation . London : n.p. , 1886 . - Darwin Made Easy . London : Progressive Publishing Co. , 1887 . - Mechanics and Experimental Science as Required for the Matriculation Examination of the University of London. . London : n.p. , 1887 . - The Working Class Movement in America . With Eleanor Marx Aveling . London : Swan Sonnenschein & Co. , 1887 . Second Edition , 1891 . - Shelleys Socialism : Two Lectures . With Eleanor Marx Aveling . London : privately published , 1888 . - Key to Mechanics . London : Chapman and Hall , 1888 . - Key to Chemistry . London : Chapman and Hall , 1888 . - Mechanics , and Light and Heat : For London University Matriculation . London : W . Stewart & Co. , n.d . [ 1888 ] . - Mechanics and Experimental Science as Required for the Matriculation Examination of the University of London : Magnetism and Electricity . London : Chapman and Hall , 1889 . - An Introduction to the Study of Botany . London : Swan Sonnenschein & Co. , 1891 . - The Students Marx : An Introduction to the Study of Karl Marx Capital . London : Swan Sonnenschein & Co. , 1892 . - An Introduction to the Study of Geology , Specially Adapted for the Use of Candidates for the London B.Sc . and the Science and Art Department Examinations . London : Swan Sonnenschein & Co. , 1893 . - Wilhelm Liebknecht and the Social-Democratic Movement in Germany . London : Twentieth Century Press , n.d . [ 1896 ] . - Charles Darwin and Karl Marx : A Comparison . London : Twentieth Century Press , n.d . [ c . 1897 ] . Translations . - L.A . Tikhomirov , Russia : Political and Social . London : Swan Sonnenschein & Co. , 1888 . External links . - Ernst Haeckel , The Pedigree of Man : And Other Essays . London : Freethought Pub. , tr . by E.B . Aveling ( 1883 ) . - Edward Aveling biography , Spartacus Educational . Retrieved 14 September 2009 .