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ROWLAND, John (1907-1984). Understanding The Atom by John Rowland, B.Sc. Sometime Cornwall County Scholar in the University of Bristol, and Science Master, The Prior School, Lifford, Co. Donegal, Ireland. The New People?s Library. Volume XVII. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd 1938. 1st Edition. 8vo (182x109mm), 93, [2]. Very Good. Original orange paperback covering in the style of The Left Book Club. This was one of the supplementary books which could be purchased from the Left Book Club on top of your one book a month subscription. This is part of a series ?The New People?s Library? which consisted of 25 of these small paperbacks published between 1937 and 1939. This is in very good condition with very little staining on the covers and sun fading on the spine. One small knock to the upper right corner of the front board and rubbing in the upper left of the rear board. Inside the book is in excellent condition apart from the front 3 pages where a previous fold in the paper has left visible fold lines. Otherwise it is completely clean with no foxing, the textblock is square and tight. Contains ephemera of a slip of paper from ?Leicestershire Book Society List of Books in the Library, January 1936? and an entrance for the book written in pencil on the other side.
The Left Book Club (LBC) started in 1936 as a monthly book club, sending members books designed to inspire left wing ideas in the UK and to galvanise an opposition to fascism. In the initial club brochure, Victor Gollancz, John Strachey and Harold Laski stated the club?s ambitious aims:
?To help in the struggle for World Peace and a better social and economic order and against
Fascism, by increasing the knowledge of those who already see the importance of the struggle,
and adding to their number the very many who hold aloof from the fight by reason of ignorance
or apathy?
What followed was an enormously successful book club, with 60,000 members at its peak, it almost became more of a movement with local ?chapters? holding regular meetings to discuss ideas and actions. The collection of books published by the LBC is fascinating not only as a key point in the history of how books were published and circulated, but by closely examining what was chosen to be published, you can make out the history not only of counter-cultural left-wing ideas of the time, but the history of the club itself and the political thinking of Gollancz, one of the most important publishers of the 20th century.
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