Voltairine de Cleyre

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Archive upgrades

September 25, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
I am gradually bringing some long-term bibliographic projects up to the point where it will make sense to publish them. While I’m still a long way from having tracked down all the work by Josiah Warren, or Joshua King Ingalls—or even William Batchelder Greene—I have reached the point where I feel like the major works are located, and I can give some useful indications of what remains to be unearthed. The goal is a series of annotated reader’s guides, ranging in scale from extremely modest to quite extensive, and one important step towards the goal is to transform the Libertarian […]
Working Translations

Octave Mirbeau, Preface to Moribund Society and Anarchy

May 25, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] Voltairine de Cleyre translated Jean Grave’s Moribund Society and Anarchy (1899; first published in French in 1893 as La Société mourante et l’Anarchie), though she admitted she was not in complete agreement with it. “As to the principal object of the work,” she said in her Preface, “that of furnishing an inclusive criticism of the institutions of our moribund society and the necessity of its speedy dissolution, I think any fair-minded reader will be convinced that it has been pretty thoroughly done. As to the “What next?” it is far less certain. With this, however, Jean Grave,—sturdy, patient, indomitable […]
Corvus Editions

Basic writings by Voltairine de Cleyre

September 20, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
While there is no shortage of editions of Voltairine de Cleyre’s writings, I’ve put together a collection which includes those I use most often, or recommend most often to others. The “basic writings” pamphlet includes “Anarchism and American Traditions,” “The Economic Tendency of Freethought,” and the two essays relating to individualism and communism. Invisible Molotov also has much of this material, in more confrontational packaging. Pick the package that fits your audience.
Anarchism

Hippolyte Havel on Voltairine de Cleyre

June 7, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Hippolyte Havel, “Introduction,” in Voltairine de Cleyre; Alexander Berkman, ed., Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre, New York: Mother Earth, 1914, 5-14. Introduction “NATURE has the habit of now and then producing a type of human being far in advance of the times; an ideal for us to emulate; a being devoid of sham, uncompromising, and to whom the truth is sacred; a being whose selfishness is so large that it takes in the whole human race and treats self only as one of the great mass; a being keen to sense all forms of wrong, and powerful in denunciation […]
Anarchism

Voltairine de Cleyre: two articles on communism

February 7, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
My work in the files of the Twentieth Century keeps dredging up gems, including a handful of pieces by Voltairine de Cleyre. Here are two connected items. I’ll post the sequel before the original, in part because it gives some context and clarification. From the February 9, 1893 issue: A GLANCE AT COMMUNISM.BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE “Cast thy bread upon the waters,Find it after many days.” Two years ago, in a little uptown parlor, the home of a Philadelphia weaver, a group of inquirers after truth were wont to assemble bi-weekly for the discussion of “Communism vs. Individualism.” There were […]