The Left Book Club was set up in 1936 by Victor Gollancz, Stafford Cripps and John Strachey to spread socialist ideas and to resist the rise of fascism in Britain. Members of the club recieved one book a month by authors such as George Orwell, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and Eleanor Rathbone. By 1939 there were 57,000 members.
Frank Jellinek, was an American journalist and writer who wrote for the communist newspaper Labor Monthly and had been a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in Spain during the Civil War of 1936-1939. As a result of his political leanings Jellinek was classified as an enemy of the German state. In 1940, mistakenly suspecting him to be in London, the Nazi Party listed him in 'Hitler's Black Book' - a directory of people who would be killed in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British island.
We hold an almost complete run of these Left Book Club editions.
