Reanimating Factory Reports: Marx, Engels and the Disposal of Blue Books

Blue Books, collections of documents of the British Parliament and Foreign Office, provided evidentiary foundations and aesthetic dimensions for Friedrich Engels's »The Condition of the Working Class in England« (1845) and Karl Marx's »Capital« (volume 1, 1867). Yet these key sources had required reanimation: although official publications, representatives of the state readily disposed of them. With reference to contemporaneous works by Thomas Carlyle, Edwin Chadwick and Charles Dickens, and a focus on documentary Gothic poetics, this article unfolds Marx and Engels's »art of quotation« (Engels 1883). In their hands, disposed-of Blue Books helped to prove that, to Capital, workers were also disposable.