Corvus Editions has always been the most tangible portion of my ongoing research projects. That research goes on pretty much every day, and some of its results end up in the Libertarian Labyrinth archives, or on the various attached blogs, and some smaller portion actually gets gathered up to be published. That means that the publication schedule has always been subject to the vagueries of the research process. There are pamphlets that come together within a few hours of a new line of research opening and there are pamphlets that have been sitting, nearly finished, for years, while I search for the bits of information that would allow me to finish them. As a result, there are always many more possible publications than there are opportunities to bring them to print, and the choices about what gets completed have often been made more by circumstances than by any very deliberate planning on my part. What makes me excited about 2015’s emerging catalog is that, in part despite and in part because of my multiple commitments beyond Corvus, I feel like I am in a place where deliberate development can play its proper role in the development of the new catalog. What that means in practice is that, while I still may not be able to set a calendar of firm release dates for individual titles in advance, I can come a lot closer to that than ever before. So, here is a look at what folks can expect from Corvus between now and the end of March:
- Proudhoniana and The Bulletin of the Bakunin Library: The next Proudhoniana will focus on the question of certainty and its criterion, combining translations from Proudhon’s works with some commentary from me. That particular question was, according to Proudhon’s own testimony, one that lurked behind his other analyses. The second Bakunin Library zine will feature another assortment of texts, together with the results of some of my research for the Bakunin Reader introduction.
- Birds, Bees, Anarchists and Other Wild Creatures: The first Corvus hardcover was a small and very limited collection of J. Wm. Lloyd’s nature writing, The Whisper-Song of the Catbird. I think it is probably past time to make that material available to a larger audience, and I’m doing so in an anthology of anarchist writings on nature, featuring more of Lloyd’s observation, bee-keeping articles from Steven T. Byington, etc.
- La Frondeuse: I have several volumes nearly complete, featuring works by Sara Bard Field, Adeline Champney and Estella Bachman, with another anthology volume also in the works. Expect a fairly steady stream of women’s writing throughout 2015.
- Two-Gun Mutualism: Expect a collection of blog posts and new writings, “In Search of the Justicier,” early in the second quarter, if not late in the first. One significant essay remains to be completed, and will determine the schedule. The thread started with “Two-Gun Mutualism and the Golden Rule” arguably contains some of my key thoughts about anarchism, violence and gender. The collection should provide some necessary clarification.
- Single author anthologies: I expect to publish a collection by individualist Frank Q. Stuart, another of works by Arturo Giavannitti, and a collection of writings on anarchist practice by Max Nettlau (as well as the collections in the La Frondeuse series.)
- Anarchist Inventions: Anarchists were often not only inventors of social theories or system, but also of various sorts of gadgets and machines. I have a first collection patent documents and descriptions of inventions assembled, featuring, among other things, J. K. Ingalls’ lighted manhole covers, Alfred B. Westrup’s mop-bucket and Lysander Spooner’s furniture cover. And there is, I think, enough material to make a second volume almost inevitable.
- Material from Tucker and Liberty: Expect a collection of C. E. S. Wood’s fiction, published under a pseudonym in Liberty, as well as a collection of writings on aspects of the book and library trade by Tucker and Francis Tandy.
- Social Science and material from Fourier: I’m assembling a regular anthology of materials from the “utopian” socialists and some of the more eccentric anarchists, Social Science, which will start by featuring Stephen Pearl Andrews, Lewis Masquerier, the communist Paul Brown and socialist inventor Jacob Etzler. I also intend to reboot a Proudhoniana-style collection of material by and about Charles Fourier, which previous appeared at one bookfair in Seattle and then disappeared from the catalog.
There will be more, and perhaps a few things will be different, but this preview should give a fairly good idea of where my focus is at the moment. By the end of the first quarter I expect to also be incorporating a few non-anarchist titles into the catalog. In 2014, those titles included The Proclamations of Emperor Norton, a collection of Symmes’ original hollow earth writings, and the complete press coverage of a 19th century airship/UFO scare in the San Francisco area.
