China's National Library announced January 13 that for at least 40 years it has owned original historic letters written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
“We have a private letter from Marx to his daughter and a letter from Engels to a friend of his,” Huang Runhua, chief of the rare books department, told the Xinhua news agency.
Few people knew the documents were in the library, said Huang. The letters were among a collection acquired in the 1950s by Huan Xiang, a diplomat serving in the Chinese Embassy in London, who purchased them from roadside used-book stalls and local auction houses. The collection was allocated to the National Library for preservation.
Posted January 18, 1999.