I am reading a biography of Clara Collet, who I read about first in a biography of George Gissing. She was a very good friend to him and his family. She sounds like an extraordinary woman in her own right, although mostly forgotten. I have only read two chapters, but I gather she became the first woman to enter the civil service in the United Kingdom. She advised eminent politicians, such as David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, on women's work primarily. It was after reading The Odd Women by George Gissing that she sought him out.
She grew up knowing Karl Marx and his family, because she was friends with his daughter, Eleanor. In fact Karl Marx helped her with her German homework once. Apparently her German teacher set her an assignment and she managed to catch onto the name Scipio Africanus. She asked Karl Marx about it, as you do, who advised her to look up the Punic Wars, of which he had a copy.