One of the most famous features of Chetham’s Library is this window alcove with its desk, where the philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels met regularly to study.
This month, the famous desk will be leaving the Library for restoration work with conservator Tim Phelps, who recently worked on the Gorton Chest, another of the Library’s treasures.
The German industrialist and Marxist philosopher Friedrich Engels lived in Manchester in the early 1840s and was employed by his father’s cotton thread manufacturing firm in Weaste.
Karl Marx, who lived in London, was a frequent visitor to Manchester, and in the summer of 1845 he and Engels developed the habit of studying together at the table in the alcove of the Reading Room.
The Library made a strong impression on the two men. Writing to Marx many years later in 1870 Engels commented:
“During the last few days I have again spent a good deal of time sitting at the four-sided desk in the alcove where we sat together twenty-four years ago. I am very fond of the place. The stained glass window ensures that the weather is always fine there. Old Jones, the Librarian, is still alive but he is very old and no longer active. I have not seen him on this occasion”.
