The Left Book Club was a publishing group that exerted a strong left-wing influence in Great Britain from 1936 to 1948.
Pioneered by Victor Gollancz, it offered a monthly book choice, for sale to members only, as well as a newsletter that acquired the status of a major political magazine. It also held an annual rally. Membership peaked at 57,000, but after the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact of 1939, it disowned its large Communist element, and subsequent years of paper-rationing, during and after the war, led to further decline. It ceased publishing in 1948.
The concept and series was revived in 2015, following at least one earlier effort to relaunch the series in the early 2000s.
Early success and organisation
The Left Book Club, founded in May 1936, was a key left-wing institution of the late 1930s and the 1940s in the United Kingdom. It was set up by Stafford Cripps, Victor Gollancz and John Strachey to revitalise and educate the British Left. The club's aim was to "help in the struggle for world peace and against fascism". Aiming to break even with 2,500 members, it had 40,000 within the first year and by 1939 it was up to 57,000. The LBC was one of the first book clubs in the UK and, as such, played an important role in the evolution of the country's book trade.
Historian Michael Newman says:
Between 1936 and 1939, the LBC provided hope for thousands of people who were seeking a solution to the burning moral issues of the era. Despite its pro-Communist line, the Club's socialist propaganda and education probably ultimately strengthened the Labour Party and contributed to its victory in the postwar election.
The club supplied a book chosen every month by Gollancz and his panel (Harold Laski and John Strachey) to its members, many of whom took part in one of the 1,500 Left Discussion Groups scattered around the country. The books and pamphlets with their distinctive covers—orange for paperback (1936–1938) and red for hardback (1938–1948) editions—bore the legend "NOT FOR SALE TO THE PUBLIC" and sold for 2s 6d to members. Many titles were available for sale only in the LBC edition, with monthly 'choices' received by all members; there were also reprints of current socialist and 'progressive' classics for members to buy. The volumes covered history, science, reporting and fiction and a range of other subjects, but always from a left-leaning perspective.
In response, Christina Foyle founded the Right Book Club, to counter what she regarded as the pernicious influence of the Left Book Club. It offered a variety of titles with Conservative and classical Liberal themes. The Right Book Club was launched in 1937 by Edgar Samuel, who worked for the bookselling firm Foyle's. Other political book clubs included the Liberal Book Club and the pacifist Peace Book Club.
1936–1939: Popular Front
Until the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact of 1939, the club's output included many authors who were members of the Communist Party of Great Britain or close to it, and many of its books offered a positive portrayal of the Soviet Union and its international policies.
World Revolution: 1917–1936 by C. L. R. James was a Trotskyist critique of the LBC's coverage of the Soviet Union during this period. At the same time, Gollancz, as a member of the Labour Party, was concerned to keep the club at a formal distance from campaigns of which the Labour Party disapproved.
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 the book's criticisms of middle-class socialists who, Orwell said, had little understanding of working class life. Later Gollancz republished the book leaving out the second part of which he disapproved.
1940–1948: War and its aftermath
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. Thereafter the club's selection of authors and titles reveals an eclectic mix.