Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas - Volume One

Volume One

Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939) was published in Montreal by Black Rose Books in 2005. Anarchist writer and publisher Stuart Christie wrote of the first volume in the Independent on Sunday that it "provides a good, comprehensive introduction to the strands, ideas and themes of anarchist and libertarian thought from the feudal era (AD300) to 1939". George Fetherling of The Georgia Straight compared the collection favourably to Daniel Guérin's No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism, observing that in contrast to Guérin's focus on the established canon of 19th-century European anarchist thinkers and adversarial style, Graham's collection "goes much farther afield, not only in scope and time but also in geography", and takes an informative, non-confrontational tone. The Kate Sharpley Library praised the collection for avoiding both repetitive drabness and the temptation to opt for selections of misrepresentative novelty, and singled out the Latin American and Asian selections as "especially valuable because so little is easily available elsewhere". The volume was also recommended by Kenneth Gregg in a literature review for the anarcho-capitalist website LewRockwell.com, and by mutualist scholar Shawn P. Wilbur.

In a review of the collection for the Fall 2006 issue of Labour/Le Travail, leading post-anarchism theorist Saul Newman declared it to be "symptomatic of a growing interest in anarchism and a revitalization of the anarchist tradition", and that it would "serve as an excellent introduction to the anti-authoritarian tradition, and an important resource for the scholar of anarchism". While identifying the collection's assembly of such a diverse range of material as its strength, Newman found its "eclecticism and sheer panoramic scope" also to be a weakness, in that the brevity of the selections often left the reader with only a superficial understanding of the author's work. Being an anthology encompassing a wide range of topics and numerous authors, readers are encouraged to consult the original sources if they wish to learn more about a particular topic or author.