Available from: Underworld Amusements

“Anarchists are an interesting body of people whom governments take too seriously and who, unfortunately, do not take themselves seriously enough.”  So begins Dora Marsden in this essay from The Egoist.

The Illusion of Anarchism was written in September 1914. Anarchism was so avant that Kropotkin was still alive. Britain was taking its first steps into World War One. The world was not yet on fire, but Dora was ready to stoke the flames against anyone who would dampen them.

Against the mutalist murmmering of anarchism comes Dora’s egoist exhortation that “men do not act after the anarchistic fashion one towards another. They are friendly and affectionate animals in the main: but interests are as imperative with them as with the tiger and the ape. [The world] is a bundle of interests, and falls to those who can push their own furthest.” But by its conclusion, The Illusion of Anarchism offers “the stirrings of a power sufficient” for anarchists willing to set aside their illusions.

Available at Underworld Amusements

“Let unholy hands keep aloof from inspired writings, let the laity believe in their old religions and their new philosophies, and let Nietzsche be the philosopher for those only who have to stand alone, but who for this very reason need an example and perhaps a guide more than any other.” —Oscar Levy, “The Nietzsche Movement in England”

From Stand Alone journal: The Nietzsche Movement in England: A Retrospect, A Confession, and a Prospect by Oscar Levy. This booklet contains a sketch of the figures that introduced and often propagandized the German philosopher’s work to the Anglosphere. Oscar Levy oversaw the translation of the first complete edition of Nietzsche’s works into the English language, working with Thomas Common, Anthony Ludovici and others, whom he writes about here.

“EGOISTS SHOULD READ” judged the Egoist journal The Eagle and The Serpent (1898) in the promotion of For Love and Money by Leighton Pagan.  Underworld Amusements has now printed this rare tract for the second installment of the Stand Alone (2016) journal, in a limited edition with a new introduction by Trevor Blake and end notes! Unavailable anywhere online, and certainly the only new edition since it was originally published by Wilson and Macmillan of London in 1898.

Leighton Pagan was the pseudonym of John Badcock Jr., more widely known for his work Slaves to Duty and contributions to Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty (1881) journal. Pagan was a public speaker and author with an egoist perspective on sex and relations. The topics he addressed and the groups he spoke to show a singular dedication to the individual’s wants (and wantonness) as supreme over society.

For Love and Money is a pamphlet collecting two published speeches by this strident individualist.

A review in the contemporary British journal The Adult said:

“Any who draw their portraits of free lovers from Artemus Ward’s delightful absurdities will regard the distinction of a free lover with a sense of humour as sufficiently unique, but in adding to this gift of writing wittily and luminously on the currency question, Mr. Pagan attains to the miraculous.”

We see there a now wholly obscure reference to Abraham Lincoln’s favorite author (real name Charles F. Browne), who published a story Artemus Ward Among the Free Lovers in 1858.

The two sections of For Love and Money were advertised as follows:

1.— The Judgment of Paris—up to date, a lecture given before the Legitimation League, dealing in the most unconventional way with the vital questions of marriage and free love.
2.—The Money Famine, a reprint of an interesting article on the money question from the Free Review.

You can currently purchase Stand Alone Number 2 in the US through Underworld Amusements. Follow @DerGeistJournal for updates on this and more.

Also of interest is this contemporary advertisement for books offered for sale alongside For Love and Money. This advert was pulled from the June 1898 issue of “The University Magazine and Free Review”.