The Radical Bookselling mss., 1895-2014, consist of book lists from radical publishers and book dealers, collected by the bookseller Lorne Bair Rare Books and described as follows:

"The publishers and dealers represented in this collection specialized in a wide array of topics on both the left and right, including but not limited to: anarchism, antifascism, birth control, Black writing and culture, communism, eugenics, feminism, freethought, 'Gandhian books,' labor rights, liberation of former colonies, libertarianism, LGBTQ+ rights, pacifism, racism and antiracism, sexism, socialism, unions, and white nationalism. Publishers and dealers include Charles Kerr, Haldeman-Julius, Greenleaf Books, the Bay Area Radical Education Project, China Books & Periodicals, the Feminist Press, New England Free Press, Pathfinder Press, and many more.

"These are highly ephemeral items, attesting to the difficulties of selling books at the cultural fringes. Dealers and publishers of marginalized material had to navigate a potentially antagonistic public while struggling with the normal challenges of the trade: the high cost of publishing new material, the difficulty of sourcing specialized secondhand material, and the challenge of reaching an inherently small radical audience. Radical booksellers often faced financial challenges, and the lists here indicate the advertising and sales strategies that publishers and dealers used to survive.

"The archive documents the circulation networks that helped spread radical materials and ideas, revealing the interplay between bookselling and community organizing. Many specialist bookstores represented in this collection tried to serve as gathering places for local communities. Documents like the Feminist Bookstores' Newsletter of the 1980s, or the reading lists published by the Intercollegiate Socialist Society in 1919, also represent farflung networks of readers cohering around specific radical interests.

"The collection also shows how larger organizations incorporated books into broader activist strategies. Some included reading lists or publishing operations in their outreach efforts; some, such as the Buffalo Workers' Movement, established specialist bookstores like Unity Books.

"In its totality, this collection provides a nuts-and-bolts view of the dissemination of radical reading material before the internet. It shows publishers and booksellers fighting obscurity and opposition to get their books into people's hands—demonstrating a belief, sustained throughout the century, in the importance of reading material as an agent of change." [Description by Lorne Bair Rare Books]