Transcribing Liberty

Between 1891 and 1908, Benjamin R. Tucker’s published 403 issues of Liberty, almost certainly the most important individualist anarchist publication in English, and probably in any language. Tucker was a, perhaps the, key player in the second phase of individualist anarchism in the United States. He both continued and greatly modified the earlier mutualist projects of William Batchelder Greene and Josiah Warren. By the end of his career he had come to embrace a Stirneresque egois—apparently worlds away from the Saint-Simon-influenced Christian mutualism of Greene’s early work or the Owenite origins of Warren’s. Questions of continuity and development within the […]

Considering the importance of Liberty, both as the primary journal of the individualist anarchist tradition and as an important component of the larger debates about social issues in its time, it is a bit surprising how difficult it is to access. For those with access to a university or other large library, Proquest’s APS Online database includes most of the run. John Zube’s microfiche edition is more complete, costs $27, and includes the either issues of Libertas (and you can order the Radical Review from John as well.) I tend to use both, relying primarily on Zube’s edition for completeness, […]

I’ve been working on a collection of short biographies of radical figures, sort of an introductory miscellany, and had been translating Elisée Reclus’ “John Brown” to include there. Gallica has a rough, but readable scan of what appears to be a pamphlet version of the text. Now that I’ve translated it, it also appears to be an incomplete version. Some text, probably at least a few lines, is pretty clearly missing. Brown’s capture, trial and death seem to have disappeared between one line and the next. This looks like an “original” error, rather than a recent scanning error. It’s still […]