Editing Thinker's Library (section)

{{Short description|Book series}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2023}}
The '''Thinker's Library''' was a series of 140 hardcover books published between 1929 and 1951 for the [[Rationalist Press Association]] by [[Watts & Co. (publishing firm)|Watts & Co.]], London, a company founded by the brothers John and [[Charles Watts (secularist)|Charles Watts]] and then run by the latter's son [[Charles Albert Watts]]. The name was suggested by [[Archibald Robertson (atheist)|Archibald Robertson]], a member of the company's board of directors, who took an active interest in setting up the series and was later to write several volumes himself.<ref name=Cooke>{{cite book |title=The Blasphemy Depot: A Hundred Years of the Rationalist Press Association| first=Bill| last=Cooke| publisher=RPA| year=2003}}</ref> The Thinker’s Library was intended as a successor to the cheap paperback “Sixpenny Reprints” from the same publisher, the aim being to bring humanist, philosophical and scientific works to as wide an audience as possible.<ref>{{cite web |title=History of Humanism in 100 Objects: The Thinker's Library |url=https://heritage.humanists.uk/object/the-thinkers-library/|website=Humanist Heritage|access-date=29 October 2023}}</ref> Unlike the previous series, the volumes in the Thinker’s Library were small hardbacks (6 ½ x 4 ¼ inches) bound in brown clothette, with grey dustjackets, priced at one shilling. The covers of the early editions featured title, author’s name and a brief description of the book between Doric columns, with the image of [[Auguste Rodin|Rodin]]’s [[The Thinker]] at the foot. The design would change several times over the course of the series, but the figure of the Thinker remained ever-present.<ref>{{cite web |title=Thinker's Library|url=https://seriesofseries.com/thinkers-library/|website=seriesofseries.com|access-date=29 October 2023}}</ref>

The library covered a wide range of subjects with a broadly humanist slant. The lists of titles occasionally published in individual volumes were arranged under these headings: General Philosophy, Psychology, Anthropology, General Science, Religion, History, Fiction and Miscellaneous. The last group included collections of essays by several writers, drama (a volume containing two plays by [[Euripides]]), poetry ([[James Thomson (poet, born 1834)|James Thomson]]’s ''[[The City of Dreadful Night]]'') and memoirs (the Autobiography of [[Charles Darwin]]). The focus was initially on reprints, often abridgements of, or selections from, longer works from well-known free-thinking writers; [[Charles Darwin|Darwin]], [[John Stuart Mill|J. S. Mill]], [[H. G. Wells]] and [[Herbert Spencer]] were among those represented in the first ten volumes. However, as the series continued it focused more and more on original titles. The first of these to be published in the series was [[Ernest Mander|A. E. Mander]]’s ''Psychology for Everyman (And Woman)'' in 1935; reprinted several times, it was to sell over 400,000 copies, and was followed by the same author’s ''Clearer Thinking: Logic for Everyman'' the following year.<ref>{{cite web |title=Alfred Ernest Mander (1894-1985) |url=https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mander-alfred-ernest-14893 |website=Australian Dictionary of Biography|date=2012}}</ref> Further original titles were contributed by J. A. C. Brown, Adam Gowans Whyte, [[Sir Arthur Smith Woodward]] and [[George Godwin]], among others, and it was Godwin's ''The Great Revivalists'' that brought the series to a close in 1951.