Proletarian Days A Hippolyte Havel Reader

The first published collection of writings by Hippolyte Havel (1871–1950), brings a crucial, yet largely forgotten revolutionary figure back into historical focus.

In this, the first published collection of writings by Hippolyte Havel (1871–1950), Nathan Jun brings a crucial, yet largely forgotten revolutionary figure back into historical focus. Havel was a Czech anarchist at the center of New York’s political and artistic circles at the turn of the twentieth century. He was an editor of numerous publications, including Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth and his influence on several writers, artists, and intellectuals (including Eugene O’Neill, Joseph Stieglitz, and Sadakichi Hartmann) helped shape American modernism. Proletarian Days provides an illuminating introduction to the man and his times. 


Praise for Proletarian Days

“This deftly annotated collection rescues from obscurity the life and thought of a steadfast transnational agitator, who struggled mightily to resuscitate U.S. anarchism in the wake of severe state repression. —Andrew Cornell, author of Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in the 20th Century

“Hippolyte Havel was an uncompromising revolutionary, an historian, a propagandist, and a social and cultural critic of no small ability, who counted some of the world’s foremost radicals and artists among his good friends. This meticulously annotated collection provides us with a fascinating, kaleidoscopic view of Havel’s tumultuous world and times, as seen through his own eyes.”
—Kenyon Zimmer, author of Immigrants against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America 

“At last! If Emma Goldman was the hub at the center of the American anarchist wheel, Havel was one of its strongest spokes. Thanks to Nathan Jun’s painstaking research, the wheel rolls on, and the ride is smoother than ever before. A major accomplishment.”
—Dana Ward, Professor Emeritus of Political Studies, Pitzer College

"This book is a gem: crafted, polished, and set... One of the most fascinating aspects of this book is its resurrection or reminder of the forgotten—forgotten people, events, places, publications."
—Shelby Shapiro, H-Socialisms

Nathan Jun is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Philosophy Program at Midwestern State University. He is the author of Anarchism and Political Modernity.

Barry Pateman formerly curated the Emma Goldman Papers Archive at the University of California Berkeley.