askchapo

It's just the sense i've gotten in my reading about him

from Kugelmann's 1928 Reminiscences is an example of mellow marx i could find quickly in my saved excerpts. Very different from the "bangs table and shouts" Marx of the 1840s.

A good series of snapshots of what Marx was like at different times in his life can be found in McLellan's collection: https://archive.org/details/mc-lellan.-karl-marx-interviews-and-recollections/page/n5/mode/2up People describing Marx in the 40s and earlier 50s have very different emphases than those talking about him later on

Two very good biographies are Mary Gabriel's "Love and Capital" and Liedman's "A World to Win," both show the shift pretty well, but don't rly draw attention to it iirc. Another good (and short) one showing the softer side of Marx, albeit one that falls a bit into (well researched) hagiography, is "The Marx he Knew" by Spargo.

Can also just generally see this in his writing, there's a big contrast between the satirical works of the mid 40s and the polemics around the 48 revolutions and aftermath; and his work on "Capital," economic lectures, newspaper articles and the like. According to Engels (preface to "The Housing Question"), in their division of labour, it fell to Engels to write popular and polemical works whereas Marx focused on "Capital" and political work.