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Left Book Club





The books and pamphlets with their distinctive yellow (hardback) or orange (paperback) covers sold for 2s 6d to members and more to the general public. The volumes included history, science, reporting and fiction and covered a range of subjects, but all with a left-leaning slant. Among the authors of its 200-plus volumes were Arthur Koestler , André Malraux , George Orwell , Katherine Burdekin and Clement Attlee .

Until the ’s ''Soviet Policy and its Critics'' (notable for its virulent assault on Trotsky) and Hewlett Johnson ’s ''The Socialist Sixth of the World''.

By early 1940, however, Gollancz had broken with the CP – a process documented in the articles collected in '' Betrayal Of The Left '' in early 1941 – and from then on the club took a strongly democratic socialist line until its demise in 1948.

Gollancz was a notoriously interventionist editor. He published Orwell’s '' The Road To Wigan Pier '' but insisted on prefacing its account of working-class life in the north of England with an introduction disowning its criticisms of middle-class socialists who had little understanding of working class life – and later republished the book leaving out the second part of which he disapproved.


REFERENCES AND EXTERNAL LINKS


  • Lewis, John. ''The Left Book Club: an historical record''. Gollancz. 1970. ISBN 0575005866

  • Laity, Paul (ed). ''The Left Book Club Anthology''. Gollancz. 2001. ISBN 0575072210

  • Edwards, Ruth Dudley. ''Victor Gollancz: a biography''. Gollancz. 1987. ISBN 0575031751

  • http://www.wcml.org.uk/culture/lbcbooks.htm - List of publications