new book about historian john saville out

John Saville volume (occasional publication 27)

The Socialist History Society is very pleased to have produced this new collection of essays in tribute to the life and work of the leading Marxist historian and lifelong Socialist, John Saville, who died in June 2009. The volume does full justice to the breadth of Saville’s interests as a historian and explains his major contribution to the understanding of British social, political and labour history. His work as an editor and polemicist are not ignored and there are incisive essays on the Socialist Register and New Reasoner; his work as a prime mover behind the Dictionary of Labour Biography is also fully covered. A strong characteristic of Saville’s writings that is reflected in this collection of essays is his uncompromising anti-imperialism which shines through in his studies of Labour foreign policy in particular. Meanwhile, his pioneering work on Chartism led him to undertake insightful research into the nature of the state’s response to the organised challenge a mass popular movement, which forms the subject of another article in this 220-page volume, whose contributors are all senior historians who have worked closely with Saville such as David Howell, Malcolm Chase and Kevin Morgan.
The volume has been sent out free to current SHS members, but additional copies can be obtained from us or from the publisher Lawrence & Wishart.
Some of John Saville’s own articles and reviews can be read online at:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/saville/index.htm