Edward Aveling

Edward Aveling

Edward Bibbens Aveling (1849 - 1898) was a prominent English biology instructor and popular spokesman for Darwinian evolution and atheism. He later met and moved in with Eleanor Marx, the youngest daughter of Karl Marx and became a socialist activist. Aveling was the author of numerous books and pamphlets and was a founding member of the Socialist League and the Independent Labour Party.

Biography

Early years

Edward 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 Harrow 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 King's College London but was unable to advance due to his atheism and avowed leftist views. He subsequently on Anatomy and Biology at the London Hospital until 1882.

Aveling married the heiress Isabel Campbell Frank on 30 July 1872, but the marriage only lasted two years. The pair separated amicably. According to Aveling, the cause of the split was his wife's inability to abide by his atheist views, although wags whispered that Aveling had married her for her money.

Political career

In 1884, Aveling became the partner of Eleanor "Tussy" Marx, the daughter of Karl Marx, despite being the estranged husband of Isabel Frank, a status which remained until her death in 1892. Although his background was in biology rather than political economy, Aveling was thrust into the inner circle of British socialism through his personal relationship with Tussy.

Later in 1884, Aveling and Marx 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 the translation of first volume of Karl Marx's book Das Kapital. Aveling also achieved some small success as a playwright under the pen-name Alec Nelson.

In the autumn of 1886, Aveling and Marx toured and lectured the United States on behalf of the Socialist Labor Party. Upon their return, they wrote a book detailing the situation of the left-wing political movement and trade unions in the US for a British audience. They found the US 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 pas 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 favor 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 Executive Committee 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.

Later life, death, and legacy

In 1897 Aveling left Eleanor and on 8 June that year secretly married an actress, Eva Frye, but returned to Eleanor when he was struck down with kidney disease. After nursing him for some time, Eleanor committed suicide mainly due to his infidelity. Aveling died four months later, on 2 August 1898, in Battersea of kidney disease. His body was cremated in Woking, 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 Marx's suicide.

Aveling was also disliked by many of his contemporaries for his tendency to borrow money from everyone. A biographer of his wife 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 middl-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, Edward Aveling is not known to have fathered any 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 Student's 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, November 5, 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.
• Shelley's Socialsm: 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., 1883.
• Edward Aveling biography, Spartacus Educational. Retrieved September 14, 2009.