Thinker's Library

The Thinker's Library was a series of 140 small hardcover books published between 1929 and 1951 for the Rationalist Press Association by Watts & Co., London, a company founded by the brothers Charles and John Watts.

The series was launched at the time when Watts & Co. was being run by Charles Albert Watts. A member of the company's board of directors, Archibald Robertson, took an active interest in setting up the series and it was he who suggested the series' name.[1]

The Thinker's Library consisted of a selection of essays, literature, and extracts from greater works by various classical and contemporary humanists and rationalists, continuing in the tradition of the Renaissance. Many of the titles were cheap reprints of classic books, aimed at a mass audience.

Catalogue of titles

Each volume consists of an eponymous essay sometimes followed by a collection of related essays by the same author, or an introductory extract from a greater work by that author. Any deviation from this format will be self-explanatory from the title. All foreign language texts were published in the English language.

  1. First and Last Things by H. G. Wells
  2. Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical by Herbert Spencer
  3. The Riddle of the Universe by Ernst Haeckel
  4. Humanity's Gain from Unbelief, and Other Selections from the Works of Charles Bradlaugh (1929)
  5. On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
  6. A Short History of the World by H. G. Wells
  7. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin by Charles Darwin
  8. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
  9. Twelve Years in a Monastery by Joseph McCabe
  10. History of Modern Philosophy by A. W. Benn (1930)
  11. Gibbon on Christianity – chapters 15 and 16 of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1930)
  12. The Descent of Man – Part 1 and the concluding chapter of Part 3, by Charles Darwin (1930)
  13. History of Civilization in England – Vol. I, by Henry Thomas Buckle
  14. Anthropology – Vol. I, by Sir Edward B. Tylor
  15. Anthropology – Vol. II, by Sir Edward B. Tylor
  16. Iphigenia – Two plays, by Euripides, translated by C. B. Bonner
  17. Lectures and Essays by Thomas Henry Huxley
  18. The Evolution of the Idea of God by Grant Allen
  19. An Agnostic's Apology, and Other Essays by Sir Leslie Stephen (March 1931)
  20. The Churches and Modern Thought by Vivian Phelips
  21. Penguin Island by Anatole France
  22. The Pathetic Fallacy by Llewelyn Powys
  23. Historical Trials (A Selection) by Sir John MacDonell
  24. A Short History of Christianity by J. M. Robertson
  25. The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade
  26. Head-hunters, Black, White, and Brown by Alfred C. Haddon (1932)
  27. The Evidence for the Supernatural by Ivor Ll. Tuckett
  28. The City of Dreadful Night and other poems – A selection from the poetical works of James Thomson (1932)
  29. In the Beginning: The Origin of Civilisation by G. Elliot Smith
  30. Adonis: a Study in the History of Oriental Religion – from The Golden Bough by Sir James G. Frazer (1932)
  31. Our New Religion by H. A. L. Fisher
  32. On Compromise by John Morley
  33. A History of the Taxes on Knowledge by Collet Dobson Collet
  34. The Existence of God by Joseph McCabe (1933)
  35. The Story of the Bible by MacLeod Yearsley
  36. Savage Survivals: The Story of the Race Told in Simple Languages by J. Howard Moore
  37. The Revolt of the Angels by Anatole France
  38. The Outcast by Winwood Reade
  39. Penalties Upon Opinion by Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner
  40. Oath, Curse, and Blessing by Ernest Crawley
  41. Fireside Science by Sir E. Ray Lankester
  42. History of Anthropology by Alfred C. Haddon (1934)
  43. The World's Earliest Laws by Chilperic Edwards (1934)
  44. Fact and Faith by J. B. S. Haldane
  45. The Men of the Dawn by Dorothy Davison
  46. The Mind in the Making by James Harvey Robinson
  47. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin
  48. Psychology for Everyman (and Woman) by A. E. Mander
  49. The Religion of the Open Mind by Adam Gowans Whyte
  50. Letters on Reasoning by J. M. Robertson
  51. The Social Record of Christianity by Joseph McCabe
  52. Five Stages of Greek religion: Studies Based on a Course of Lectures Delivered in April 1912 at Columbia University by Gilbert Murray (1935)
  53. The Life of Jesus by Ernest Renan (1935)
  54. Selected Works of Voltaire by Joseph McCabe
  55. What are we to do with our lives? by H. G. Wells
  56. Do What You Will by Aldous Huxley (1936)
  57. Clearer Thinking (Logic for Everyman) by A. E. Mander
  58. History of Ancient Philosophy by A. W. Benn
  59. Your Body: How it is built and how it works by D. Stark Murray
  60. What is Man? by Mark Twain (1936)
  61. Man and His Universe by John Langdon-Davies
  62. First Principles by Herbert Spencer
  63. Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
  64. This Human Nature by Charles Duff
  65. Dictionary of Scientific Terms as Used in the Various Sciences by Charles Marsh Beadnell
  66. A Book of Good Faith by Montaigne
  67. The Universe of Science by Hyman Levy
  68. Liberty To-day by C. E. M. Joad
  69. The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine
  70. The Fair Haven by Samuel Butler (1938)
  71. A Candidate for Truth: Passages from Emerson (1938)
  72. A Short History of Women by John Langdon-Davies
  73. Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings by Henry Maudsley
  74. Morals, Manners, and Men by Havelock Ellis (1939)
  75. Pages from a Lawyer's Notebooks by E. S. P. Haynes
  76. An Architect of Nature – The autobiography of Luther Burbank (1939)
  77. Act of God by F. Tennyson Jesse
  78. The Man versus The State by Herbert Spencer
  79. The World as I See It by Albert Einstein (1940)
  80. Jocasta's Crime: An Anthropological Study by Lord Raglan
  81. The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales by Richard Garnett
  82. Kingship by A. M. Hocart
  83. Religion Without Revelation by Julian Huxley
  84. Let the People Think by Bertrand Russell
  85. The Myth of the Mind by Frank Kenyon
  86. The Liberty of Man and Other Essays by Robert G. Ingersoll
  87. Man Makes Himself by V. Gordon Childe
  88. World Revolution and the Future of the West by W. Friedmann (1942)
  89. The Origin of the Kiss and Other Scientific Diversions by Charles Marsh Beadnell
  90. The Bible and its Background. Vol. I. by Archibald Robertson
  91. The Bible and its Background. Vol. II. by Archibald Robertson
  92. The Conquest of Time by H. G. Wells (1942)
  93. The Gospel of Rationalism by Charles T. Gorham
  94. Life's Unfolding by Sir Charles Sherrington (1944)
  95. An easy Outline of Astronomy by M. Davidson
  96. The God of the Bible by Evans Bell
  97. Man Studies Life by G. N. Ridley
  98. In Search of the Real Bible by A. D. Howell Smith
  99. The Outlines of Mythology by Lewis Spence
  100. Magic and Religion by Sir James G. Frazer
  101. Flight from Conflict by Laurence Collier
  102. Progress and Archaeology by V. Gordon Childe (1944)
  103. The Chemistry of Life by J. S. D. Bacon
  104. Medicine and Mankind by Arnold Sorsby
  105. The Church and Social Progress by Marjorie Bowen [pen-name of Margaret Gabrielle Long]
  106. The Great Mystics by George Godwin
  107. The Religion of Ancient Mexico by Lewis Spence
  108. Geology in the Life of Man by Duncan Leitch
  109. A Century for Freedom by Kenneth Urwin
  110. Jesus: Myth or History? by Archibald Robertson
  111. The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays by William Kingdon Clifford
  112. Human Nature, War and Society by John Cohen
  113. The Rational Good: A Study in the Logic of Practice by L. T. Hobhouse
  114. Man: The Verdict of Science by G. N. Ridley
  115. The Distressed Mind by J. A. C. Brown
  116. The Illusion of National Character by Hamilton Fyfe (1940)
  117. Population, Psychology, and Peace by J. C. Flugel
  118. Friar's Lantern by G. G. Coulton
  119. Ideals and Illusions by L. Susan Stebbing
  120. An Outline of the Development of Science by M. Mansel Davies
  121. Head and Hand in Ancient Greece: Four Studies in the Social Relations of Thought by Benjamin Farrington
  122. The Evolution of Society by J. A. C. Brown
  123. Background to Modern Thought by C. D. Hardie
  124. The Holy Heretics: The Story of the Albigensian Crusade by Edmond Holmes
  125. Man His Own Master by Archibald Robertson
  126. Men Without Gods by Hector Hawton
  127. The Earliest Englishman by Sir Arthur Smith Woodward
  128. Astronomy for Beginners by Martin Davidson
  129. The Search for Health by D. Stark Murray
  130. The Mystery of Anna Berger by George Godwin
  131. Wrestling Jacob by Marjorie Bowen [Pen-name of Margaret Gabrielle Long]
  132. The Origins of Religion by Lord Raglan (1949)
  133. The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth, and Drama by Lord Raglan
  134. The Life of John Knox by Marjorie Bowen [Pen-name of Margaret Gabrielle Long]
  135. The French Revolution by Archibald Robertson
  136. The Art of Thought by Graham Wallas
  137. Literary Style and Music by Herbert Spencer
  138. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (reprint of first edition) (printed but unpublished)
  139. The Science of Heredity by J. S. D. Bacon
  140. The Great Revivalists by George Godwin (1951)

Bibliography
  • Cooke, Bill (2003). The Blasphemy Depot: A Hundred Years of the Rationalist Press Association. London: Rationalist Press Association. ISBN 0-301-00302-5. Republished as: The Gathering of Infidels: A Hundred Years of the Rationalist Press Association, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Press, 2006. ISBN 1-591-02196-0.

References
  1. Cooke, Bill (2003). The Blasphemy Depot: A Hundred Years of the Rationalist Press Association. RPA.
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