Lines of Dissent: Writing from the 'New Statesman' , 1913-1988

Published by Verso, 1988, hardcover, index of contributors, 376 pages, previous owner's name to endpaper. otherwise condition: as new.

The compilation gathers work by Samuel Beckett, E.M. Forster, Graham Greene, D.H. Lawrence, Malcolm Muggeridge, J.B. Priestly, Bertrand Russell, and Rebecca West & others.

The New Statesman  is a British political and cultural news magazine published in London.  Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sydney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members of the socialist Fabian Society, such as George Bernard Shaw, who was a founding director. 

The magazine has recognised and published new writers and critics, as well as encouraging major careers. Its contributors have included John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Virginia Woolf, Christopher Hitchens, and Paul Johnson.

 In November 1914, three months after the beginning of the war, the New Statesman published a lengthy anti-war supplement by Shaw, "Common Sense About The War".  a scathing dissection of its causes, which castigated all nations involved but particularly savaged the British. It sold a phenomenal 75,000 copies by the end of the year and created an international sensation. The New York Times reprinted it as America began its lengthy debate on entering what was then called "the European War".