The Right Book Club: Text Wars,Modernity and Cultural Politics in the Late Thirties

‘The Battle of the Books: New Selling for New Readers’, Times, 28 September 1937, p. 15.

See Samuels Stuart , ‘The Left Book Club’, Journal of Contemporary History, 1:2 (1966), 65–86; Hodges Sheila , Gollancz: The Story of a Publishing House (London, 1978); Reid Betty , ‘The Left Book Club in the Thirties’, in Clark Jon Heineman Margot Margolies David Snee Carole (eds), Culture and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties (London, 1979); Edwards Ruth Dudley , Victor Gollancz: A Biography (London, 1987); and Laity Paul (ed.), Left Book Club Anthology (London, 2001).

See for example, Branson Noreen Heinemann Margot , Britain in the Nineteeen Thirties, (London, 1971), p. 303, Cunningham Valentine , British Writers of the Thirties (Oxford, 1989), p. 231 and Bracco Rosa Maria , Merchants of Hope: British Middlebrow Writers and the First World War 1919–1939 (Oxford, 1993), p. 56.

This bibliographical gap is compounded by the absence of an official archive for the Right Book Club. RBC publications cited in this article are in the possession of the author.

Foyle William Alfred , 1885–1963, founded Foyle's Bookshop Ltd with his brother, Gilbert S. Foyle in 1904. Christina Agnes Lillian Foyle, 1911–99, see obituary, Guardian, 10 June 1999, p. 22.

‘Right Book Club Success’, Observer, 25 April 1937, p. 12 and Letter, Christina Foyle to Terence Rodgers, 21 July 1986.

See Williams Keith , British Writers and the Media (London, 1996) and Williams Keith Mathews Steven (eds), Rewriting the Thirties: Modernism and After (London, 1997).

Observer, 25 April 1937, p. 12.

Light Alison , Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the Wars (London, 1991), p. 11; Teeling William , Why Britain Prospers (London, Right Book Club edition, 1938) p. 19, and more generally, John Baxendale and Christopher Pawling, Narrating the Thirties. A Decade in the Making: 1930 to the Present (London, 1996).

‘The Battle of the Book Clubs’, The Bookseller, 3 March 1937, p. 228; ‘Notes and News’, The Bookseller, 28 April 1937, p. 414 and Scotsman, 1 March 1937, p. 15.

The Bookseller, 10 March 1938, p. 262 and 14 April 1938, p. 426. For Gollancz's early reaction to the RBC, see ‘Editorial’, The Left News, April 1937, p. 304.

‘Right is Might: Join the “Right” Book Club’, Observer, 28 February 1937, p. 6.

The Right Book Club, Prospectus, 1937 and Prospectus, 1938. Examples of the Club's wider political activities can be found in the The Bookseller, 20 January 1938, p. 41, the Times, 30 March 1938, p. 16, and in The Right Bulletin, which was circulated privately to all patrons and members of the Club. Notable initiatives included the formation of a ‘Right Theatre Movement’ and the publication of a number of ‘Right Booklets’ attacking the British left and its leading voices. In 1939 the notoriously thin-skinned Victor Gollancz instigated legal proceedings against Christina Foyle and Stanley Johnson, the RBC's Organisational Director, for alleged slander and libel. See Bookseller, 4 May 1939, p. 45.

Richard Griffiths, Patriotism Perverted: Captain Ramsay, the Right Club and British Anti-Semitism 1939–1940 (London, 1998), p. 122.

Letters, Christina Foyle to Terence Rodgers, 1 August 1986 and 22 August 1986. See also Dan Stone, ‘The Extremes of Englishness: The “Exceptional” Ideology of Anthony Mario Ludovici’, Journal of Political Ideologies 4:2 (1999), 191–218. Christina Foyle eschewed formal links with right-wing political organisations, but during the late thirties she travelled regularly to Germany.

See Griffiths , ibid., and also Griffiths Richard , Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933–1939 (Oxford, 1983). For example, Peter Agnew (1900–1990) was a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship, an enthusiast for Franco and a member of the Right Club. In Parliament he spoke frequently and disparagingly on the subject of alien immigration and Jews.

Julian S. Huxley to Christina Foyle, 2 November 1939; A. G. MacDonnell to Christina Foyle, 3 November 1939. Copied to the author by Christina Foyle, 1 August 1986.

See Times, 27 April 1937, p. 8; The Spectator, 5 March 1937, p. 394.

‘It seems admirably suited to our purpose … and in view of the difficulty that undoubtedly exists of getting good Right books, this one seems to be a find.’ Anthony Ludovici to Christina Foyle, 15 February 1938. Copied to the author by Christina Foyle, 1 August 1986.

Viscount Lymington, Famine in England (London, Right Book Club edition, 1938), p. 203. See also Linehan Thomas , British Fascism 1918–1939: Parties, Ideology and Culture (Manchester, 2000), pp. 140–1.

Times, 28 September 1937, p. 15.

Ibid. See also, McAleer Joseph , Popular Reading and Publishing in Britain 1914–1950 (Oxford, 1992).

Precursors included the Times Book Club established in 1905 and the Book Society, which was formed in 1929. But as a concept, book clubs had their beginnings in the USA and Germany. See Feather John , A History of British Publishing (London, 1988) and Janice A. Radway , A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire (Chapel Hill, NC 1997).

The Book Club, Prospectus, 1937 and Morning Post, 17 September 1937, p. 6.

The Left News, March 1938, p. 719.

The Bookseller, 10 March 1937, p. 245; Times 3 March 1938, p. 9; National Book Association, Prospectus, 1939. The NBA's most significant achievement was the republication of Hitler's Mein Kampf in January 1939 with an inserted editorial by Bryant in which he praised Hitler and likened his politics to those of Benjamin Disraeli.

See for example, The Bookseller, 20 January 1938, p. 41, and 19 May 1938, p. 83.

ibid., 28 July 1937, p. 111.

ibid., 20 October 1937, p. 418.

Times, 1 October 1937, p. 17; ‘The New Writer’, 5 October 1937.

The Bookseller, 3 June 1937, p. 132; ibid., 10 November 1937, p. 412.

Hamilton Ciceley , Modern England (London, 1938), p. 178. American critics of book clubs voiced similar concerns. See Rubin Joan Shelley , The Making of Middlebrow Culture (Chapel Hill, NC, 1992), pp. 94–8.

Sunday Referee, 29 August 1937, p. 11.

The Bookseller, 12 May 1938, p. 46.

Mason H. A. , ‘Education by Book Club ?’, Scrutiny, 4:3 (December 1937), 242; Barlow S. H. , ‘Book Club Hysteria’, The Library World, 11:464 (April 1938), p. 211.

Cole Margaret , Books and the People (London, 1938) and ‘Mrs Cole and Us’, The Bookseller, 2 February 1939, pp. 122–3.

For an interesting discussion of thirties reportage, see Williams Keith , ‘Post/Modern Documentary: Orwell, Agee and the New Reportage’, in Williams Mathews , Rewriting the Thirties, pp. 163–81.

Gibbs Philip , Ordeal in England (London, Right Book Club edition, 1938), pp. 272–3.

See ‘Mass Observing the Book Reader’, The Bookseller, 9 March 1938, pp. 344–5 and Chibnall Steve , ‘Pulp Versus Penguins: Paperbacks Go To War’, in Kirkham Pat Thoms David (eds), War Culture: Social Change and Changing Experience in World War Two (London, 1995), pp. 131–49.

See Radway , A Feeling for Books, p. 173 and Williams , British Writers, pp. 1–19.

See Light , Forever England, p. 8.

Priestley J. B. , Out of the People (London, 1941), p. 45.