English books

Godwin was an eighteenth-century radical writer and journalist and one of the leading participants in the debates sparked by the French Revolution. Text by Ruth Kinna and cover art is by Clifford Harper.

The stories of the hard-rock miners’ shooting wars, young Elizabeth Gurly Flynn (the “Rebel Girl” of contemporary sheet music), the first sit-down strikes and Free Speech fights, Emma Goldman and the struggle for birth control access, the Pageant for Paterson orchestrated in Madison Square Garden, bohemian radicals John Reed and Louise Bryant, field-hand revolts and lumber workers’ strikes, wartime witch hunts, government prosecutions and mob lynching, Mexican-American uprisings in Baja, and Mexican peasant revolts led by Wobblies, hilarious and sentimental songs created and later revived - all are here, and much, much more.

Perhaps more than any other war in the twentieth century, the Spanish Civil War was seen as a 'writers' war' - names such as Hemingway and Orwell spring to mind. But the women who went to Spain and wrote about it have often been forgotten. This anthology is part of efforts to redress the balance. It includes writing by women from Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand - and from unsung nurses and relief workers as well as internationally celebrated writers. Bringing together extracts from memoirs, letters, diaries and poems, this collection provides a moving overview of the Spanish Civil War from the perspective of women participants.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the general Western conception of work had been reduced to simply gainful employment. But this limited perspective contrasted sharply with the personal experience of most people in the world - whether in colonies, developing countries or in the industrializing world. Moreover, from a feminist perspective, reducing work and the production of value to remunerated employment has never been convincing.

Composed in 1790, Mary Wollstonecraft’s seminal feminist tract A Vindication of the Rights of Woman broke new ground in its demand for women’s education. A Vindication remains one of history’s most important and elegant broadsides against sexual oppression. In her introduction, renowned socialist feminist Sheila Rowbotham casts Wollstonecraft’s life and work in a new light.