Welcome to the Kate Sharpley Library

The Kate Sharpley Library exists to preserve and promote anarchist history. (More information.)

Everything at the Kate Sharpley Library - acquisitions, cataloguing, preservation work, publishing, answering enquiries is done by volunteers: we get no money from governments or the business community. All our running costs are met by donations from members of the collective, subscribers and supporters, or by the small income we make through publishing. Please consider donating and subscribing.

We also try to promote the history of anarchism by publishing studies based on those materials - or reprints of original documents taken from our collection. Check out our books and pamphlets available for sale or explore our online documents or browse back issues of our Bulletin.

Our physical library (in California) includes books, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts and ephemera documenting the history of anarchist movements. Contact us to arrange a visit.

Recent news

August 2010 update

Recently added to the Kate Sharpley Library website:

Two more articles from Mat Kavanagh's 'some little known anarchists': Frank Kitz and James Harrigan.

The text of Dare to be a Daniel! by Wilf McCartney (a history of one of Britain’s earliest syndicalist unions in the catering trade).

Love, Sacrifice and Revenge by Diego R. Barbosa (The first chapter of a 1936 Spanish Anarchist novel set in Andalusia, and an account of the novel and its author, who was murdered by fascists in 1936.)

Also Joint Manifesto of the Revolutionary Youth Federation and the Committees for Workers' Control by Albert Meltzer. Anarcho-syndicalism : an outline of constructive anarchism was added in June.

July saw Memoirs of a FAI Gunman and a Chronicle of Anarchist Barcelona [Book Review] by Agustín Guillamón (two other pieces on 'The Mir affair' can be read here) and a scan of The same old Kate : a play.

London Anarchist Bookfair 2010

The venue has been booked for the 2010 London Anarchist Bookfair. For the fourth year running it will be at Queen Mary’s, University of London on the Mile End Road. The date for the 2010 bookfair will be SATURDAY 23RD OCTOBER from 10am to 7pm.

See their (new) website www.anarchistbookfair.org.uk

See you there!

I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels now readable online here

I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels: Sixty Years of Commonplace Life and Anarchist Agitation by Albert Meltzer is now available to read online here on the Kate Sharpley Library website.

If you want to get a hard copy, they're available from us and from AK Press. Besides the usual portability, the hard copy comes with the special linocut illustrations by Chris Pig. AK also carry Albert's Anarchism: Arguments For and Against.

The copy hosted on Spunk Press (Marked up by Chuck0 in 1996) is still there, but not always accessible. So, we've taken the files, given them another proofing for typos, and posted them. You can start with Stuart Christie's Foreword, or you could see everything we have written by (or about) Albert Meltzer.

We hope to add some subject headings soon.

May 2010 KSL Bulletin

KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 62, May 2010 has recently been posted on the site. You can get to the contents here or read the full pdf here.

Fabbri's Preventative Counterrevolution

We have just posted the translated text of Fabbri's Preventative Counterrevolution, an incisive essay on Fascism. The pdf is here.

"[Fabbri's] most incisive, most effective, intellectually most inspiring essay is, in our judgement, Preventive Counter-revolution (1922). It was written in the heat of the moment whilst fascist goons were gaining the upper hand over the revolutionary disturbances in the factories and the fields. The post-war elections had inflated out of all proportion the strength of the leftwing parties, the striking workforce was poised to bring the system grinding to a halt and the trams were running with red flags on display. It was time to act, before the reaction could orchestrate any countervailing measures. Fabbri wrote: “But the revolution did not come and was not made. There were only popular rallies, lots of rallies; and alongside these demonstrations, countless choreographed marches and parades … Moreover, this euphoria lasted too long, at almost two years; and the others, the ones who felt everyday that they were under threat of being toppled from their thrones and stripped of their privileges began to wake up to the situation and appreciate their own strength and the weakness of their enemies.” And they had armed the fascists to mount a counter-revolution to pre-empt the revolution; what we might describe as a preventative counter-revolution which fastened upon society even though the revolution never happened. This was Fabbri’s interpretation of the fascist phenomenon, which came into existence as the armed wing of the landlords and capitalists and as a substantially novel force, the subsequent evolution of which defies explanation unless we recognise a frightening series of errors, shortcomings, ingeniousness and weakness on the part of the left."
From Remembering Luigi Fabbri by Francesco Lamendola.