Bakunin Library

Bakunin Library

A possible plan for an edition in ten volumes

June 5, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
I have now had a chance to do a lot of the work of estimating just how many pages we are dealing with, just how marginal and fragmentary some of the fragments and variants are, etc., and have been laying out tentative volumes. My working assumption at this stage, based on the little feedback I’ve received, is that there is indeed a desire for a fairly complete edition, but perhaps not such a deep scholarly desire that every fragment and variant needs to make it into a print edition. For the moment, I’m also banishing the thought that we’ll run […]
Bakunin Library

Strategizing a bit

May 21, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
There are inevitably choices to be made about any “collected works” project. Even a “complete works” collection generally has to draw some specific lines around what will count as “complete,” generally by limiting what will count as “works.” In the case of Bakunin, the most complete writings are his letters, addresses, and a body of shorter articles, generally addressing fairly specific occasions. His longest and most ambitious published works were nearly all extracted from larger, unfinished manuscripts. It’s not an uncommon problem, but it does pose a particular set of problems, not the least of which is that it takes […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin on Hamlet (1837)

May 18, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Welcome to the Bakunin Library, which is part of a project to translate and publish the work of anarchist Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) in English. The blog will feature news about the translation project and the eventual publication by PM Press. It will also feature working translations of previously untranslated works, transcriptions of earlier translations, and material relating to the life and thought of Bakunin. Without further ado, I would like to launch the site with a new, slightly rough translation of an early essay by a young Bakunin on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, an apparently unpublished work […]
Bakunin Library

The New Adventure: Bakunin in English

April 5, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’m just back from the 2012 Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair, which was, as usual, a lot of fun—and more than a bit exhausting. I took a much narrower slice of the Corvus Editions catalog than usual, focusing on translations and the Eliphalet Kimball collection, and was pleased with the response. Translation was also the focus of a lot of the networking this year, and several great projects should be rolling out over the next couple of months. The big project that is mine to announce is the Collected Works of Bakunin in English, which PM Press is finally ready […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin’s “Political Theology of Mazzini”

March 11, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] There are still lots of gems hidden in the pages of Liberty, and some of them are not, perhaps, quite what you would expect to find. For instance, Sarah Holmes translated Bakunin’s lengthy essay, “The Political Theology of Mazzini and the International,” and Tucker serialized it in his paper. I’ve collected the text here in the Libertarian Labyrinth archive and will be releasing a pamphlet version at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair next weekend. It’s a very interesting read. Give it a look. [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] The Political Theology of Mazzini And […]