[‘100% Socialist but disrespectful to Marx’: Sir Richard Acland, Labour politician and a founder of CND.] Typed Letter Signed to Philip Dosse, publisher of ‘Books and Bookmen’, describing his self-published book ‘The Next Step’.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. The recipient Philip Dosse was proprietor of Hansom Books, publisher of a stable of seven arts magazines including Books and Bookmen and Plays and Players. See ‘Death of a Bookman’ by the novelist Sally Emerson (editor of ‘Books and Bookmen’ at the time of Dosse’s suicide), in Standpoint magazine, October 2018. This item is 2pp, 4to. In good condition, lightly aged and worn, with the two leaves attached by a slightly rusty staple. Folded twice for postage. Large sprawling signature ‘Richard Acland’ above typed name ‘Sir Richard Acland’. After stating that he is sending a blank cheque for the latest issue of Books and Bookmen, he makes ‘an urgent appeal for help’ regarding a book titled ‘Four Years Hard Labour’ (‘by the financial editor (or advisor) of one of the London papers’, and (I’m almost sure) of the Evening News’). He is quotiing it, ‘as an authority’, in ‘a book which I am publishing [...] when I say “I am publishing” I mean it literally. I’ve ordered 5000 copies of THE NEXT STEP direct from the printer and shall have to sell them without benefit of publisher’s travellers’. He describes the book as ‘a religio-political analysis of our total social distress; 100% Socialist but disrespectful to Marx; seriously religious but contemptuous of the leaders of the institution Church (or Churches); but most contemptuous of all of the intellectual atmosphere breathed in and out in the Senior Common Rooms of our Universities which actually is [last two words underlined] the social sickness from which the Western World is suffering’. He will have ‘a better idea of what you might be able to do with this book of mine’ once he has seen ‘Books and Bookmen’: ‘But if you have any ideas about what I could do to help you to help my book to be known, do write and tell me.’ He lays out the plans for publication, ‘subject, of course, to there being no sharp deterioration in industrial working’. Autograph postscript: ‘Oh dear; just heard the strike is on. Probably add 1 1/2 weeks to first & 3 weeks to second date!’