Some recent additions [Nov. 2024]

To be frank that title is a misnomer. What it really should say is something like “some items that have just about made it to the catalogue – well nearly anyway!” That is a bit ungainly so the shorter version will have to do. When we talk about cataloguing please don’t think it is a sharp and smooth operation at the KSL. If it were only that simple!! Let me give you an example. One of the writers we mention below is the writer and literary critic Louis Adeane. He published a book of poems called “The Night Loves Us” Delphic Press, 1948. There you go, then. Just put the correct details in the correct fields and it is all done. Catalogued into existence. But wait, your cataloguer muses fingers poised over the keys. Didn’t Albert McCarthy have something to do with the Delphic Press? I believe he did. And didn’t Albert McCarthy publish a catalogue of jazz music? And haven’t we got some of the volumes on the shelves? Five hours later your cataloguer is attempting to answer the question what were the colour of Kropotkin’s trousers that he wore at a meeting in 1897 and the Adeane sits there, still waiting for love. 
Bearing that in mind here are some items that have made or nearly made the catalogue:

The Unstoppable Anarchist Ersilia Cavedagni and Her Selected Writings

There is no publisher on this 40pp pamphlet but you can download it on-line from the Louise Crowley Library which is doing some great work preserving the memories and effects of anarchism in the Puget Sound region of the US. This pamphlet is part of that work and it challenges what we think we know about Italian anarchism in the United States from the 1890s onwards. Women suddenly appear as militants and, guess what, some Italian anarchist men come across as utter fuckwits. Cavedagni’s writings are perceptive and thoughtful tinged with a healthy dose of anger. One senses there is more to be found and it will be an exciting journey discovering it.

Plain Words: The “Good War” of Italian Immigrant Anarchists in the United States 1914-1920 Roofdruk, roofdruk@riseup.net, 2024

This covers some similar territory to the pamphlet listed above. This 334 page book (no author is identified) is translated from the Italian and is an account of the actions of some anarchists around the newspaper “Cronaca Sovversiva” as attacks on Italian anarchists by the police became more frequent. Some of these events appeared in Paul Avrich’s “Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background” (1991) but there is some new and interesting material here. Written from the perspective of the anarchists this book offers unwavering support for these comrades throughout the pages. Some may find this a difficult book but it is essential reading. There is also a troubling Appendix on the role of Mario Buda with concerns that his role as an agent of the state may have gone much deeper than Avrich suggests.

Poetry and Poverty No 1 (London) and Poetry and Poverty No 3 (London).

Produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s these two volumes feature the poetry of Louis Adeane in Volume One and some critical writing by D.S. Savage in Volume 3. By Volume Three the journal was far more professionally produced. Both were anarchist writers and literary critics who, with others, attempted to delineate a theory of anarchist literary criticism. If that sounds a bit on the periphery I think that reading their overall work makes you think again. It has a surprising relevance to it, I sense. The same donor who gave us these titles also gave us the book of Adeane poems mentioned above and some interesting Free Age Press pamphlets by Tolstoy. Thank you!!

Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis Archief. Uitgave Van Het F.D.N.-Fonds, Amsterdam 1956, 79pp.

A catalogue of Domela Nieuwenhuis’ work which, I guess by it’s date of publication is probably out of date. That said it is a good place to begin to think about this prolific Dutch anarchist writer. Freedom Press published the pamphlet The Pyramid of Tyranny (1909) which we scanned and put on the website recently [https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/v9s6xb] and there seems to be a lot more interesting material that has yet to make it into English.

Edwin Hughes. An Apostle of Freedom: A Tale of the Anarchists. J.W.Arrowsmith, Bristol, 1895.

As far as we can tell there was a whole genre of potboiler fiction featuring anarchists published in England during the 1890s. This is no better or worse than the rest of them. The anarchists are unreal there is a romantic interest (lots of looks, little touching) and an unlikely plot with underdeveloped characters. Perhaps that’s why this cataloger enjoyed reading it so much. Some lovely illustrations though.

So, as the sun sinks below a pile of papers and the cataloger sits sniffing some books and pondering did Malatesta like fried bread we wish you well in your reading and thinking.