The Story of The R.P.A. 1899-1949 by A. Gowans Whyte (HQ394)

Published 1949: First Edition / Hardcover / Very Good Condition / Illustrated throughout

Original black cloth with gilt titles on the spine. 105 + very clean and bright pages. Boards slightly faded with time consistent with age. Overall a well preserved publication. (HQ394)

Postage €4.00.
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The Rationalist Association, known as the Rationalist Press Association until 2002, was founded in 1885 by radical publisher Charles Albert Watts from his print works, CA Watts & Company Limited at Johnsons Court, London. Watts was part of a group of freethinkers who felt that the British secularist movement had become too political in nature, and had started to abandon its intellectual tenor. Watts was also looking for a way to circumvent the mainstream booksellers and publishers who often refused to handle secularist material. Watts first established the Propagandist Press Committee in 1890, appointed George Jacob Holyoake as President. Shortly afterwards the committee changed its name to the Rationalist Press Committee, and by 1899 the Rationalist Press Association had been formed. The Association began issuing reprints of serious scientific works by Julian Huxley, Ernst Haeckel and others, as well as establishing the CA Watts & Co Thinker’s Library book series (under the leadership of Fredrick Watts), published from 1929 to 1951.
https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/collections/rationalist-association-archive