Left Book Club

1936–1939: Popular Front

Until the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact of 1939, the club's output included many authors who were members of the Communist Party of Great Britain or close to it, and many of its books offered a positive portrayal of the Soviet Union and its international policies.

World Revolution: 1917–1936 by C. L. R. James was a Trotskyist critique of the LBC's coverage of the Soviet Union during this period. At the same time, Gollancz, as a member of the Labour Party, was concerned to keep the club at a formal distance from campaigns of which the Labour Party disapproved.

Gollancz was a notoriously interventionist editor. He published Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier but insisted on prefacing its account of working-class life in the north of England with an introduction disowning the book's criticisms of middle-class socialists who, Orwell said, had little understanding of working class life. Later Gollancz republished the book leaving out the second part of which he disapproved.

The LBC held its first annual LBC rally in February 1937, and the tradition continued until the late 1940s. The largest was in April 1939, when thousands attended the Empress Stadium in Earls Court, to hear a roster of speakers that included Liberal leader and former wartime Prime Minister, David Lloyd George; Sir Stafford Cripps, recently expelled from the Labour Party because of his Popular Front advocacy; Ellen Wilkinson another Labour Party renegade prominent for her role in the Jarrow March; and CPGB leader Harry Pollitt.

1940–1948: War and its aftermath

By early 1940, however, Gollancz had broken with the CP, a process documented in the articles collected in Betrayal of the Left in early 1941. Thereafter the club's selection of authors and titles reveals an eclectic mix.

Despite its large membership and popular success the Book Club was always a huge financial drain on the publisher, and the advent of paper rationing at the onset of the war meant that the club was restricted to just one monthly title. To replace the book club's additional choices and augment the LBC selections, Gollancz launched the "Victory Books" series, a series of shorter monographs available to the general public. These included two of the biggest selling publications of the entire War period: Guilty Men (July 1940) by "Cato" (Michael Foot, Frank Owen and Peter Howard) and Your M.P. (1944) by "Gracchus" (Tom Wintringham).

In addition to books, the LBC also produced a monthly newsletter. This began as a simple club newssheet Left Book News, but gradually developed (as Left News) into a key periodical about international, political and social affairs, with lengthy editorials from Gollancz.