1939 Radical American History Textbook

Allan Seager, They Worked for a Better World. 1939. The People's Library, Macmillan: New York. Hardcover 16-mo with original dust-jacket.

 

This book was published by an imprint called 'The People's Library', ironically a subsidiary or sub-imprint of the Macmillan corporation, or perhaps distributed through it; further research into it is required, but the flavour of its publications can be gleaned from the notices on the back of the dust-jacket. It represents a thinly-veiled attempt to introduce an awareness of the non-conformist tradition into the overwhelmingly reactionary historical education of American youth in the 20th Century. Written in the tone of a standard, triumphalist history textbook of the period, it subtly shifts the emphasis of the 'American spirit' away from benevolent state power to protest and agitation. The roots of American colonisation in the formation of Capitalist joint-stock companies is emphasized, and the effects of this orientation followed through. The story of America since then is organised through biographies of five examples – none of whom ever held state power (no presidents, no war heroes), all of them activists, most of them having served prison terms for their efforts: the Free Thought & anti-racist heretic preacher Roger Williams, the radical polemicist and professional revolutionary Thomas Paine, the Pacifist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Feminist organiser and some-time abolitionist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the Socialist theorist & novelist Edward Bellamy. (One would wish for a representative of full-blown abolitionism and one of indigenous resistance as well – but, racial equality is repeatedly promoted in the book and overall, this is not bad at all for a book aimed at mainstream readers in 1939.)

The explicit lesson urged on students is that political freedom depends upon critical thought and continual activism: 

"If you believe that the work these five people did is valuable – and you cannot disbelieve it any more than you can deny your eyes or teeth or anything that is a part of you – then it might be a good idea if Americans looked around and tried to identify the real benefactors of our own time. Admittedly, this is hard to do  . . . From the lives of these five examples, the 'good' seems to mean the right of people to live together with decency, freedom, and dignity. All people, that is. Black or white, Jew or Gentile, Catholic or Protestant, mere humanity should be enough to guarantee the right . . . It would not have been a bad thing to have helped them in their work, and it would not be a bad thing to hunt out, recognize, and help the men and women like them who are living now."

This copy was found in a thrift shop in Roanoke, Virginia.

Anticlerical Propaganda, c.1830-50.

 

Anonymous, Les Moines devoilés ou le jesuit Malagrida (The Monks Unveiled or the Jesuit Malagrida). Undated, c.1830-1850. Etching.

This anonymous print is part of the surge of anti-clericalism that was a massive presence in the Left from the French Revolution until well into the 19th Century. On one side, the movement intersected with a number of progressive movements including free speech, anti-racism, anti-imperialism, socialism and proto-anarchism, and the separation of Church and State. On the other, it quickly became a driving force in a slew of conspiracy theories from both Left- and Right-wing perspectives, and often led to anti-Catholic persecution and fed into growing nationalism and xenophobia in Protestant countries. The  Jesuit order was often considered the epitome of Catholic/Clerical abuse and duplicity.

This print emphasizes the humanitarian aspects of anti-clericalism, while still appealing to more conservative monarchist sentiments. The central figure is labelled as the powerful 18th Century Jesuit Gabriel Malagrida, who who was implicated in a supposed plot on the life of King José I of Portugal, on extremely flimsy evidence; here, he brandishes a manuscript entitled "Hatred of Kings". To his left is Jacques Clémont, the ultra-Catholic assassin of the religiously tolerant King Henry III of France; to his right is unidentified. The bricks of the edifice around Malagrida are inscribed with the products that drove colonial conquest, including tobacco, opium, gum arabic, pears, topaz, porcelain, etc. We see the Jesuit order blamed, with varying degrees of legitimacy, for the destruction of Native American cultures in the conquest and colonial exploitation of Latin America, the enslavement of African and Native American people, the persecution of Heretics, and the overthrow and execution of six European kings.

Aristide Marie's rare 1922 Biography of Petrus Borel

 Petrus Borel: Le Lycanthrope; son vie et son oeuvre, suivi d'une bibliographie [Petrus Borel: The Lycanthrope; His Life and his Work, Followed by a Bobliographie], by Aristide Marie. 1922. Editions "La Force Françase": Paris. Softcover octavo w/plastic archival sleeve, 208 pp. No. 119 of Limited Edition of 505 copies. With light annotations by previous reader on back flyleaf.

Aristide Marie was one of the most active historians of the Romanticist avant-garde during the modernist period, and this, the second biography of Borel to be published (7 decades after Claretie's) was both partly prompted by, and contributed to the interest in Borel and the Bouzingo stirred up by Dada, nascent Surrealism, and other Modernist avant-gardes drawing inspiration from the group. That this interest still, as always, remained limited to the most intense corners of the avant-garde is evidenced by the fact that it was still produced in only 500 copies, one of the smallest editions that could be contracted to a commercial printer.

Bifur – 1929 Avant-Garde Journal edited by Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes

Bifur. ed. Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes. No. 3, (Sept. 30, 1929). Editions de Carrefour: Paris. Softcover Octavo, 191 pp. No. 749 of Limited Edition of 3,000.

The influential and eclectic avant-garde journal Bifur, one of the main vehicles of avant-garde activity outside the Surrealist hegemony, was edited by the poet & playwright Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, who had been among the most strident of the dadaists and was associated at this time with the Grand Jeu group; in this issue he is represented by a short story, "Mariage d'Élisa" ('Elisa's Marriage'). Other contributions include an article on Paul Hindemith by the composer Darius Milhaud, an array of texts ranging from poetry and stories to articles on the political situation and essays on society that explore similar anthropological territory as Bataille's Collège du Sociologie and their Documents journal – a connection supported by the inclusion of stark, documentary-style photographs of disparate and uncontextualized photographs including industrial machinery, film stills, ethnographic scenes, avant-garde paintings, etc. All this is rounded out by works by Hölderlin, James Joyce and Ernest Hemmingway in translation (Joyce from the English and the latter 'from the American').

The Evadamist cartoonist Traviès mocks bureaucrats in CHARIVARI

Le Charivari (The Hullabaloo). Year 2, No. 134 (Saturday, April 13, 1833) Paris. Paperback Quarto, 4 pp.

 

The print-maker and political cartoonist Traviès was one of the most devoted adherents to the Evadamist movement, which united avant-Romanticism, occult magic, feminism, and militant socialism. Here he ridicules the archetype of the bourgeoisie, a bureaucrat.

Post-WWII treans-continental Sci-Fi Fanzine: FANTASY ADVERTISER

Fantasy Advertiser. ed. Gus/Norman E. Wilmorth. Vol. 1, No. 6, Jan. 1947. Mimeographed Side-stapled Quarto, 62 pp. From the collection of Hyman Brodofsky, president of the National Amateur Press Association, 1934-37.

 

This mimeographed sci-fi fanzine sheds fascinating light on how the growth of genre/nerd subculture was catalyzed by the Second World War. Building on the many affinity-based friendships between British and American soldiers during the War, this home-made fanzine was a transatlantic collaboration, made in Los Angeles but with a distro address in Leeds, England for European fans. The magazine is dedicated entirely to ads by fans or by the first pioneering genre-specialized book-sellers, advertising their offerings and their needs, in order to facilitate the sharing of magazines and books hard to find on the opposite side of the Atlantic - doing the work that the internet would eventually facilitate fifty years later. Thanks in part to the growth and strengthening of this network, Sci-Fi was just beginning to define itself as a genre and a subculture distinct from the broader "fantasy" catch-all of previous generations, as evidenced by the fact that this was the last issue to be mimeographed, before circulation grew to a size that enabled it to switch from home-printed mimeograph to contracted offset printing. Close perusal of these home-made ads, replete with fan art and nerdy inside-jokes, provides a fun and revealing look at a subculture in the early stages of defining itself.

This copy was owned by the writer and editor Hyman Brodofsky, a very active Amateur Journalist (the predecessor of a Zinester) who edited the amateur journal The Californian and was president of the National Amateur Press Association (N.A.P.A.) from 1934-37, where internal power-struggles prompted H.P. Lovecraft to defend him and compare his prose rhythm favourably to Flaubert and Dunsany.

Célestin Nanteuil – Etching of his painting 'Charity' from the 1861 Salon

 Célestin Nanteuil, La Charité (Charity). 1861. Etching. From Le Monde Illustré.

This etching reproduces the ex-Bouzingo artist Nanteuil's painting exhibited at the 1861. Though photography was developing by this time, photographs could not yet be easily and cheaply printed for mass audiences or in newspapers and magazines, so most paintings were reproduced and known by most people through etchings; Nanteuil, who was best known as a print-maker, etched this himself.