Young Marx

Returning to pages of the New Left Review is always a joy.

One of its main contributors in the 1970's was the Italian philosopher Lucio Colletti, whose introduction to a Penguin selection of Karl Marx's writings from his early years -- originally The Young Marx (if memory serves me! I read it in my late teens, together with another Penguin collection, The Revolutions of 1848), and now re-titled Early Writings -- had a great influence on my development:

"(...) this astonishingly rich body of works formed the cornerstone for his later political philosophy. In the Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of the State, he dissects Hegel's thought and develops his own views on civil society, while his Letters reveal a furious intellect struggling to develop the egalitarian theory of state. Equally challenging are his controversial essay On the Jewish Question and the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, where Marx first made clear his views on alienation, the state, democracy and human nature. Brilliantly insightful, Marx's Early Writings reveal a mind on the brink of one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history - the theory of Communism.
This translation fully conveys the vigour of the original works. The introduction, by Lucio Colletti, considers the beliefs of the young Marx and explores these writings in the light of the later development of Marxism."

I then chose the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844) as the most notable essay therein. Learning about the aggiornamento of Marx's thinking during and after the break with the Young Left Hegelians (Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach) is fundamental to understanding his 'mature' works.
A text of the Manuscripts can be obtained here for free.
Below is the present 'look' of the book: