His father August Carl Oswald, publisher for the university and his mother Christiane Brédé.

Together with Edgar Quinet he wrote for the monthly newspaper „La Liberté de penser“.

After Napoleon III French coup d'état of 1851 he was sent to Mazas Prison and wrote there his „Gefängnisbetrachtungen über Frankreich“.

[9] His translation The Sphere and Duties of Government influenced John Stuart Mill for his book „On Liberty“.

He was one of the founders of the English Goethe Society[18] and a friend of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

In 1941, the Bodleian Library bought a collection of letters written to Eugen Oswald by prominent liberals and socialists.