ANARCHIST BOOK SELLER
In 1927, Pádraic Colum complained in the Irish Statesman that not enough writers were working in the Irish language. Liam O’Flaherty replied testily. His play Dorchadas had recently been performed by the Gaelic Dramatic League to full houses, he wrote, but the only payment he had received for it was from a man who could not even read it. O’Flaherty had sold the manuscript to ‘an English Socialist’ for £25. He would not write another word in Irish, he blustered, at least not for the public’s benefit. In any case, the only readers he now wrote for were his wife and his London editor, Edward Garnett. His intellectual world had shrunk to a party of two. The parsimonious Gaels were on their own.
In fact the buyer of the O’Flaherty playscript was neither English nor a socialist. Charles Lahr was a German anarchist; he was also a bookseller and publisher. The Progressive Bookshop on Red Lion Street in central London, which Lahr ran with his wife Esther Archer, was a tiny place – no more than a cubicle, according to the writer H.E. Bates – which shared the ground floor of an eighteenth-century building with a jumble shop. They rented the floors overhead to lodgers; the basement was home to book stacks and packages of unsold magazines, along with the decayed sofa used by overnight visitors. Some of the lodgers sat in the shop during the day, and if there were five or six of them there was no room for customers. ‘The Human Notebook’, an elderly man who always wore a battered silk hat, might be in place loudly expounding on world affairs. One hand pulled stacks of fried potatoes from greasy newspaper while he talked, the other produced from his pockets an endless stream of tattered newspaper clippings. Another visitor, occasional lodger, and confessed book thief was the Antrim-born orator Bonar Thompson, ‘the Prime Minister of Hyde Park’. Michael Foot would remember him as an oratorical hero; to Sean O’Casey he was just an insufferable chancer. Outside the shop were the usual dusty barrows full of unsellable stock. Underneath the front pavement was the lavatory – occupied, one visitor remembered, for two hours every morning by an old man who descended slowly and painfully from the building’s upper stories, sending all the other lodgers and customers around the corner to the public conveniences by the Holborn Empire.
Charles Lahr manuscripts
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Bookmark:https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb96-slv/36
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This material is held at Senate House Library Archives, University of London
Reference
GB 96 SLV/36
Dates of Creation
1926-1967
Name of Creator
Lahr, Charles (1885-1971) political activist and publisher
Language of Material
English
Physical Description
15 files (c250 items)
Scope and Content
Mainly comprising letters sent to Charles Lahr by various writers.
Administrative / Biographical History
Charles Lahr was born Karl Lahr in 1885 at Wendlesheim in the Rhineland Palatinate, Germany. During his teenage years he became first a Buddhist and later an anarchist. In 1905, to escape conscription into the German army, he left Germany for London. On arriving in London he worked as a baker and expressed his political involvement by joining and frequenting anarchist clubs. By 1914 Lahr had taken work as a razor grinder and had joined the British Section of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He began to accumulate books at around this time as he moved from residence to residence in the Kings Cross area of London. He also let rooms to people he met through his political activities. Designated an enemy alien, Lahr was interned in Alexandra Palace in London from 1915 to 1919. After the war Lahr returned to his trade and continued his involvement with the IWW, where he met his future wife, Esther Archer, whom he married in 1922. Lahr and Archer both joined the Communist party in 1920, but left in 1921. It was during this brief membership that the Lahr met and became friends with Liam O'Flaherty. In 1921 Lahr took over the Progressive Bookshop at 68 Red Lion Square, Holborn. The bookshop became a centre for new writers and political activists from around the world, and specialised in the sale of radical literature and first editionsThe Lahr's first moves into publishing came in when K. S. Bhat recommended the editors of the New Coterie to take the magazine to the Lahrs. From 1925 onwards Lahr started publishing items on his own account, often using his wife's maiden name to counter anti-German prejudice. During 1925 to 1927 these took the form of offprints from New Coterie, and then articles within the magazine itself. In the publishing world he was in close contact with writers such as D. H. Lawrence, T. F. Powys, James Hanley, A.S.J. Tessimond, Liam O' Flaherty, Paul Selver, Russell Green, George Woodcock, Rhys Davies and several others. The New Coterie ran until 1927, and in 1930 Lahr launched his Blue Moon Booklets and a year later the Blue Moon Press. However, by 1933 Lahr was having financial problems. In 1935 his difficulties came to a head when he was found guilty of receiving stolen books and was sentenced to six months imprisonment. However, after his release he continued his publishing activities although on a much reduced scale. The bookshop continued to be a focus for radicals and revolutionaries.The bookshop in Holborn was bombed in May 1941. Lahr moved the bookshop to several locations in central London before finally moving it to the headquarters of the Independent Labour Party at 197 Kings Cross Road, London. Charles Lahr died in London in 1971.
References:R. M. Fox, 'Lahr's Bookshop' in Smoky Crusade, Hogarth Press, 1938, pp. 180-188.D. Goodway, 'Charles Lahr: Anarchist, Bookseller' in London Magazine, Jun-Jul 1977, pp. 47-55.
Radical Lives: Charles Lahr
by Daniel Whittall @danwhittall
Published 10th November 2014
Charles Lahr was born in the Rhineland town of Bad Nauheim in 1885. Originally going by the name of Carl Lahr, he moved to London in 1905 having become an anarchist before leaving Germany. When he first arrived in England, Lahr worked in a bakery. According to Albert Meltzer, he was monitored by the Metropolitan Police, who allegedly suspected him of planning to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was visiting Britain at the same time. Lahr was interned during the First World War as a potential enemy alien, and arrested in 1935 for receiving stolen books. As a German radical in Britain, Lahr was under constant surveillance.
What did he do?
Shortly after arriving in Britain, Lahr fortuitously met Guy Aldred who was also working as a baker. A fellow anarchist, Aldred founded the Industrial Union of Direct Actionists in 1907, with Lahr becoming secretary of the Whitechapel branch. Lahr was also a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and he helped Aldred found the first Bakunin Press, as well as a number of small anarchist and educational organisations in the early years of the twentieth century. In 1922, Lahr married Esther Archer, a radical agitator and IWW organiser, having met her at the Socialist Club in Charlotte Street.
However Lahr is most renowned for the various second-hand bookshops he founded in London, foremost amongst which was Lahr’s at 68 Red Lion Street, Holborn. Described by Jonathon Rose in his book The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes as “a mecca for down-and-out Nietzcheans and scruffy poets,” Lahr’s was also frequented by prominent leftist radicals and Bloomsbury intellectuals. Rose tells the story of R.M. Fox, a factory worker and autodidact whose writings were published by the Hogarth Press and who taught for the Workers Educational Association. Fox was disillusioned with both the Labour Party and radical Marxists, but found in Lahr’s a space to indulge his passion for “philosophic Germans, gloomy Scandinavians, sour Swedes and analytical Russians.”
Lahr had bought the bookshop, originally called the Progressive Book Shop, from his friend, political associate, and fellow member of the IWW, Harold Edwards, who recalled in his short memoir that Lahr made a reasonable amount of money through the shop, especially in the 1920s, but cared so little for financial gain that much of the money was lost by being sunk into unsuccessful publishing ventures.
What were his ideas?
The popularity of Lahr’s bookshop was as much about the proprietor as it was about the availability of a diverse set of radical and cosmopolitan texts in his bookshop. As Ken Weller suggests, the shop became “a centre of radical and advanced literary ideas.” David Goodway, in a memoir of Lahr penned in the late 1970s, suggested that was “very probably the last” of the “great London radical booksellers-cum-publishers” whose lineage can be traced back to the late eighteenth century.
The beneficiaries of this vibrant atmosphere of political and intellectual discussion fostered by Lahr were numerous. For example, as Christian Høgsbjerg shows in his recent book C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain, Lahr took a particular interest in his customers and their own writings. James recalled that Lahr would “put aside a book or pamphlet for me… Through Charlie I was made acquainted with pamphlets and publications of the American Trotskysist movement, also with similar publications in French.” Lahr also shaped James’s thinking on the Russian Revolution, the demise of the German Revolution, and on Stalinism more broadly, on which James would publish his 1938 book, World Revolution.
What is his legacy?
Lahr was a political radical who fostered an open culture of discussion and exploration through the sharing of information that crossed national and political boundaries. A passionate anarchist, Lahr nevertheless stocked books from other political traditions – C.L.R. James recalled purchasing volumes by Stalin on Leninism from Lahr – and from those focused on political discussion beyond Britain.
For someone like James, initiating himself into the British left after arriving from Trinidad, Lahr was essential, providing details of political events and discussing contemporary political questions. For James, it was Lahr’s role as a purveyor of knowledge that was most attractive; as he recalled, “Charlie did not so much argue a political issue. He disseminated information.”
In an era of social media and online access to information about almost anyone and anything, it can be difficult to recover a sense of just how important such radical purveyors of information were to political and social movements. Lahr’s bookshop was at the centre of a network of diverse radical political activists. Today’s activists use newer forms of technology to perform much the same function that Lahr used his bookshops for – the sharing of information and the fostering of radical political movements. Yet to read the testimonies of Meltzer, James and others for whom Lahr performed a formative role in their own political understandings is to recognise the power that such facilitators have. Political struggle takes place not just on the street but in the mind; it will require many more Charlie Lahrs of the modern age if the radical left is to win.
Share URL: http://novara.media/1e21XqYPublished 10th November 2014
INTRODUCTION
What follows is the basis for a comprehensive listing of radical bookshops in Britain, plus a
comprehensive bibliography. It has been compiled by Dave Cope and Ross Bradshaw. There are many gaps at the moment as we preferred to start with whatever information we had and put out something, even if sketchy in parts, rather than wait till the list was more complete. At least names of shops and any details can be added now by anyone by just sending an email.
If there is a certain bias towards CP bookshops, this is because a lot of the information was
gathered for the background to Dave Cope’s little history on Central Books. This should be corrected as more shops are added.
There is the thorny problem of definition. Generally, the emphasis is on socialist bookshops. We are including anarchist, feminist, green, black, gay and some “community” bookshops. This grouping coincides roughly with the membership of the Federation of Radical Bookshops (till 1980 called the Federation of Alternative Booksellers, an organisation which excluded those shops not run on a cooperative basis and those run by political groups). The FRB was representative of radical bookshops at the time and reflected the upsurge of such shops in the 1970s/1980s. This was an important phenomenon in cultural politics and it would be silly to ignore it in a listing like this. However, there were members who could be described as radical more because of their structure than for what they sold. I have not included the following shops, which would certainly be in some people’s definition of “radical”: new age, alternative health, community, alternative literature/underground unless members of the FRB.
Some of these shops did sell radical and socialist magazines. Compendium, for example, is included because of its size and importance as an outlet for radical books.
It is interesting to note, from an historical perspective, that Eva Reckitt who owned Collets had a broad policy on stock but drew the line at “those mysterious world religions” and “phoney psychology”.
We have more information on many of the shops than appears here, but it is not practicable to enter it all – the document would be unwieldy – and we hope eventually to publish a book on the subject. DOWNLOAD TO READ
Charles Lahr (1885–1971),
born Carl Lahr, was a German-born anarchist, London bookseller and publisher.
Lahr was born at Bad Nauheim in the Rhineland, the eldest of 15 children in a farming family. He left Germany in 1905 to avoid military service and went to England.
In London he encountered the anarchist Guy Aldred (1886–1963), while working as a baker.[1] He was soon (1907) under police observation.[2] He joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1914; at that time he had a bookshop in Hammersmith.
In 1915 he was interned for four year as an enemy alien in Alexandra Palace. In 1920-21 he was briefly a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. His interest in politics led him to befriend many left-wing thinkers, several of whom went on to establish important left-wing groups in the UK. In 1921 he took over the Progressive Bookshop, in Red Lion Street, Holborn. From there he would branch out into publishing, and establish many literary friendships (including H. E. Bates, Rhys Davies, T. F. Powys) and D. H. Lawrence. At one point when Lahr was in financial difficulties his writer friends gathered a collection of stories together and published these as Charles Wain (1933).He married in 1922 Esther Argeband,[3] (at that time Archer), whom he had met at the Charlotte Street Socialist Club, of a British Jewish family (Lahr was not Jewish). They were close friends of William Roberts, the artist, and his wife, and William's portrait of Esther is in the Tate Gallery.From 1925 to 1927 Lahr published The New Coterie literary and artistic magazine. In 1931 he founded the Blue Moon Press, a small press amongst the books he published was the first edition of a small book of poems by D. H. Lawrence called Pansies.In subsequent misfortunes Lahr was convicted in 1935 on a charge of receiving stolen books, and was sentenced to 6 months in prison.[4] In a short story from Something Short and Sweet (published 1937), H. E. Bates describes the court case with Lahr called "Oscar" in the story. The bookshop was bombed in 1941. He moved its premises several times in London.He died in London in 1971. His funeral was attended by many representatives from left wing groups in the UK.There is substantial further information on Lahr in a book authored by his daughter Sheila. This is called Yealm and can be read in its entirety on the Militant Esthetix website, run by Lahr's granddaughter Esther Leslie.
Lahr's papers are held by the University of London.
Notes
External links
Charles Lahr (1885–1971),
born Carl Lahr, was a German-born anarchist, London bookseller and publisher.
Lahr was born at Bad Nauheim in the Rhineland, the eldest of 15 children in a farming family. He left Germany in 1905 to avoid military service and went to England.
In London he encountered the anarchist Guy Aldred (1886–1963), while working as a baker.[1] He was soon (1907) under police observation.[2] He joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1914; at that time he had a bookshop in Hammersmith.
In 1915 he was interned for four year as an enemy alien in Alexandra Palace. In 1920-21 he was briefly a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. His interest in politics led him to befriend many left-wing thinkers, several of whom went on to establish important left-wing groups in the UK. In 1921 he took over the Progressive Bookshop, in Red Lion Street, Holborn. From there he would branch out into publishing, and establish many literary friendships (including H. E. Bates, Rhys Davies, T. F. Powys) and D. H. Lawrence. At one point when Lahr was in financial difficulties his writer friends gathered a collection of stories together and published these as Charles Wain (1933).He married in 1922 Esther Argeband,[3] (at that time Archer), whom he had met at the Charlotte Street Socialist Club, of a British Jewish family (Lahr was not Jewish). They were close friends of William Roberts, the artist, and his wife, and William's portrait of Esther is in the Tate Gallery.From 1925 to 1927 Lahr published The New Coterie literary and artistic magazine. In 1931 he founded the Blue Moon Press, a small press amongst the books he published was the first edition of a small book of poems by D. H. Lawrence called Pansies.In subsequent misfortunes Lahr was convicted in 1935 on a charge of receiving stolen books, and was sentenced to 6 months in prison.[4] In a short story from Something Short and Sweet (published 1937), H. E. Bates describes the court case with Lahr called "Oscar" in the story. The bookshop was bombed in 1941. He moved its premises several times in London.He died in London in 1971. His funeral was attended by many representatives from left wing groups in the UK.There is substantial further information on Lahr in a book authored by his daughter Sheila. This is called Yealm and can be read in its entirety on the Militant Esthetix website, run by Lahr's granddaughter Esther Leslie.
Lahr's papers are held by the University of London.
Notes
- Lahr, Charles, 1885-1971 | libcom.org
- William J. Fishman, East End Jewish Radicals 1875-1914 (2004), p. 271.
- Sharman Kadish, Bolsheviks and British Jews (1992), p. 235.
- AIM25: Senate House Library, University of London: Lahr, Charles
A revolutionary youth - Harold Edwards - Libcom Feb 12, 2012 - Harold Edwards' reminiscences of his life as an Anarchist and Wobbly in ... next door to the shop where first I and then Charlie Lahr were to become booksellers. ... I noticed also that whenever I prayed for anything I never got it! ... of the Progressive Book Shop which Charlie Lahr ultimately brought from me.
clr james in imperial britain, 1932-38 christian john h0gsbjerg ...
Indeed, he later recalled how 'my publisher's wife', Pamela De Bayou, 'a ... will only make the situation more farcical than it now is', and progressive and labour ... soon made the acquaintance of the German anarchist bookshop owner. ... 8S James's friendlv local anarchist bookseller Charlie Lahr was also on hand and keen ...
Inky Stephensen - Core Mar 10, 2019 - The name was a joke but it also indicated the pervasive impact of this. Asian naval ... at Maryborough Grammar, and one of his government's progressive ... books on guild socialism and had met the Australian communist Esmonde ... cancelled her subscription, and the bookseller Charles Lahr had sold.
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