Helen Macfarlane

Helen Macfarlane (25 September 1818 – 29 March 1860) was a Scottish Chartist, early feminist journalist, and a philosopher. She is best known for creating, in 1850, the first English translation of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which had been published in German in 1848. From April to December 1850, she contributed three essays for George Julian Harney's monthly, the Democratic Review, and ten articles for his weekly paper, The Red Republican.

In 1851 she "disappeared" from the political scene. Until research in the 21st century by Macfarlane biographer David Black, and by BBC Radio Scotland broadcaster Louise Yeoman, very little was known about many parts of Macfarlane's life. Yeoman wrote of her in 2012: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a period drama must be in want of a feisty heroine who finds love at last. But our heroine, Helen Macfarlane was no fictional character and her life would have shocked Jane Austen's smocks off."