From Kate Sharpely Library - by Jessica Moran
For anarchists—those defined in the most general terms as believing in a political and social theory of society without government and through voluntary relationships—the written and published word has been central to their movement. From early on, anarchists in the United States and Europe published and collected their ideas and written work. This published literature was one of the main sources of anarchist propaganda and a means to communicate and spread ideas. Newspapers, pamphlets, and, books were instrumental in sharing and documenting the philosophies and actions of the anarchist movement; anarchist libraries were a natural continuation and followed shortly thereafter.
Many early English language anarchist periodicals produced pamphlet series, often with some sort of anarchist library subtitle. For example, early American journals such as Liberty, Free Society, and Mother Earth had pamphlet series called the “Liberty Library,” “Free Society Library,” and the “Mother Earth Library.” The long-running English anarchist paper Freedom also maintained a pamphlet series called the “Freedom Library.”
