Books, Works & Articles

In this section of the portal we aim to introduce key books by CLR James, approximately in the order in which CLR James wrote them, which of course rarely coincides with their date of publication. Some have been reprinted many times and some are newly becoming available singularly or as collections. Where possible we have indicated different editions whose forwards, acknowledgments and additions often provide fresh insights. We have indicated too, selected reviews and papers which relate to these works and welcome further research and suggested reviews and items to add. All of these key works have been read by key crew members working on the documentary film which this portal accompanies. The material used to outline these books has been taken from jacket covers, forwards and reviews which the crew believe sum them up well. We also indicate pamphlets and works by CLR James that have been particularly illuminating, these feature at the end of this section and are not in chronological order. We welcome additions.

In 1932 CLR James left his home in Trinidad for the first time and sailed to the United Kingdom to fulfil his literary ambitions. He was 31 years old. During his first weeks in London he wrote a series of vigorously opinionated essays for the Port of Spain Gazette, giving his impressions of the great city and its’ inhabitants, and describing his progress through the Bohemian circles of Bloomsbury.

Published in 2003 by Signal Books Letters from London collects these essays which form an extraordinary record of a crucial period in James’s life, with an extensive introduction and notes. Drawn to London’s literary and political avant-garde, he describes life in Bloomsbury, arguments with Edith Sitwell, visits to theatres, museums and concert halls, and his seminal friendship with the great West Indies cricketer, Learie Constantine. Initially in awe of London, James soon develops a critical stance towards the city and its once mysterious people, analysing their drab architecture, shallow newspapers and repressed social relations. “Londoners have had sixty years of compulsory education and all the advantages of a great modern city,” he writes. “When you look at the intellectual quality of the people, you are astonished.” A resurrected “classic” of considerable importance, Letters from London provides a

The Life of Captain Cipriani (1932) is the earliest full-length work of nonfiction by C. L. R. James. Written before he left Trinidad, it was first published by Cartmel & Co in 1932 when James arrived in Nelson, Lancashire to stay with Learie Constantine. It is partly based on James’s interviews with Arthur Andrew Cipriani (1875–1945). As a captain with the British West Indies Regiment during the First World War, Cipriani was greatly impressed by the service of black West Indian troops and appalled at their treatment during and after the war. After his return to the West Indies, he became a Trinidadian political leader and advocate for West Indian self-government. James’s book provides us with a powerful statement of developing West Indian nationalism.

This volume brought together as part of the excellent new CLR James Archive Series includes the biography, the pamphlet, and a new introduction in which Bridget Brereton considers both texts and the young C. L. R. James in relation to Trinidadian and West Indian intellectual and social history. She discusses how James came to write his biography of Cipriani, how the book was received in the West Indies and Trinidad, and how, throughout his career, James would use biography to explore the

Minty Alley is seen as an early classic of modern Caribbean writing in English. Written while he was in Trinidad, it is the only novel written by C.L.R. James and belongs to the ‘Beacon period’ of Caribbean literature in the late 20’s and 30’s. C.L.R. James promised another novel after Minty Alley, first published in 1936, but that novel never emerged.

Minty Alley and James’s short stories establish the compassionate creative imagination that was to illuminate a brilliant social, political and historical analysis of the Caribbean and the world at large. They also underline a special dimension of the spirit behind his creative critical writing. As Kenneth Ramchand states in his introduction to a 1994 reprint, “Minty Alley offers an opportunity to sketch out some of the continuities in the West Indian literacy scene, and to introduce a new generation to an important and interesting work by the most distinguished West Indian of our time and his.”

As the George Padmore Institute explain, Minty Alley’s larger-than-life characters, vernacular dialogues, and local intrigues offer insight into a formative period of

Throughout his life C.L.R. James was a key activist and writer on anti-colonnial struggles and the struggle for freedom in the New World. A History of Negro Revolt was first published by the Independent Labour Party in Britain in 1938. It was revised as A History of Pan-African Revolt in 1969. Innitially it formed a series of pamphlets rather than a book, one was published every month as part of the ‘Fact’ series of ‘sixpenny monographs’. It is divided into six chapters: ‘San Domingo’, ‘The Old United States’, ‘The Civil War’, ‘Revolts in Africa’, ‘Marcus Garvey’ and ‘Negro Movements in Recent Years’.”

“The only place where Negroes did not revolt is in the pages of capitalist historians,” James asserted against the leading historians who promoted virulently racist depictions of the peoples of Africa and the diaspora as passive savages to be “civilized” by colonialism. His history placed Black people at the center of struggles for their own future as opposed to passively waiting on the sidelines of history for enlightened white people to rescue them.

James work provides us with a rich history of little known rebellion and as he later

In 1934 CLR James wrote the play Toussaint L’Ouverture: The Story of the Only Slave Revolt in History, which was presumed lost until the rediscovery of a draft copy in 2005. The play’s production, performed in 1936 at London’s Westminster Theatre with a cast including the American star Paul Robeson, marked the first time black professional actors starred on the British stage in a play written by a black playwright.

This edition includes the program, photographs and reviews from that production, a contextual introduction and editorial notes on the play by Christian Hogsbjerg, and selected essays and letters by James and others. Toussaint L’Ouverture is an indispensable companion work to The Black Jacobins (1938), James’s classic account of Haiti’s revolutionary struggle for liberation.

“The text of this nearly forgotten drama, succinctly introduced to today’s readers with a valuable set of accompanying essays, is an invaluable contribution to Pan-African studies and our understanding of ‘the Black Plato’ as a remarkably talented black playwright. CLR James readers, and not only those of The Black Jacobins, will

Written in 1937, World Revolution was a contemporary attempt to synthesize the experience of the revolutionary movement after World War I. In judging its significance, it is worth bearing in mind the circumstances that gave rise to it.

The sheer weight of the apparatus of the Soviet Union and of the Comintern had established a virtual monopoly over Marxist thought by the mid 1930s. Dissident currents, had been successfully marginalised and reduced to small group existence by massive propaganda or terror. Early in 1934 a dozen or so members of the Communist League, the first British Trotskyist organisation, at the instigation of Denzil Harber and Stewart Kirby and with Trotsky’s support, had left the parent body to set up a faction, later called the Marxist Group, inside the Independent Labour Party, which had itself parted company with the Labour Party a couple of years earlier. By this time CLR James had made contact with members of the Labour Party in Nelson in Lancashire, but when he came down to live in Boundary Road in North West London he was recruited into the Trotskyist movement and joined the Marxist

Written by C.L.R. James in 1938, it is hard to sum up James’ seminal and perhaps best known work as there is so much to say and it is so rich in inspiration both for its historical research and for the amazing history of the successful slave revolt it tells. We will leave it to a jacket cover and provide some choice reviews (there are many), but in short the book itself must be read.

From the Allison & Busby 1980 Edition:

This classic study of the only successful slave revolt in history is a masterpiece of historical scholarship, astute political analysis and narrative excitement. In 1791 the Caribbean Island of San Domingo, France’s most profitable colony and the greatest single market for the European slave trade, found itself in the grip of revolution. The island’s slaves rebelled, embarking on a twelve year struggle against their white masters and successive invading armies of French, Spanish and British troops. The final defeat of Bonaparte’s 1803 expedition resulted in the establishment of the black state of Haiti. The leader of this achievement was himself a slave until the age of forty-five – Toussaint L’Ouverture. Why and how the revolution happened, how it created this brilliant leader and how he in turn brought it to its’ triumphant

Originally published in 1950, C.L.R. James and a small circle of collaborators making up the radical left Johnson-Forest Tendency reached the conclusion that there was no true socialist society existing anywhere in the world. It is useful to note that understanding the nature of the then Soviet Union was in the 1950’s and late into the 20th century, a major concern for activists and writers and hotly debated. In this book CLR James vilification of Stalinism is more than evident, he is also concerned to critique what he refers to as ‘orthodox Trotskyism’.   Written in collaboration with Raya Dunayevskaya and Grace Lee Boggs, a recent edition published in 2013 by PM Press includes the original preface from Martin Glaberman to the third edition, C.L.R. James’ original introductions to three previous editions, and a new introduction from James’ biographer Paul Buhle.

In a foreward CLR James wrote for the 1986 edition he says “for me Marxism is itself the movement of history and I cannot do better than to make clear that what the reader will find in this document is a restatement in contemporay terms of Lenin’s most profound reflections in 1923 as he knew

In the introduction to the book, Anna Grimshaw explains that CLR James completed his long essay on American Civilization in early 1950. His work on the manuscript was abandoned as he became swept up in a fight to avoid deportation from the USA and he never again found the circumstances in which to complete the original work he planned. Robert Hill, James’ Literary Executor write’s in an illuminating afterword; “America bears a heavy responsibility for CLR James….America provided him with the freedom and opportunity to demonstrate his mastery of the discourse of modern civilization.”

The work was finally published in 1993 by Blackwell Publishers and Anna Grimshaw worked on the introduction while James was still alive.

As the book jacket tells us:

In the tradition of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, James addresses the fundamental question of the “right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. Ranging widely across all aspects of American politics, society, and culture, James

This is James celebrated study of Herman Melville and a highly accessible, thrilling read. James began writing the book in June 1952 after immigration officials removed him to Ellis Island where he was detained for the next six months. He was detained under the McCarren-Walter act as a ‘foreign subversive’.

As David Roediger has written, there can be no doubt that that Mariners is a minor classic and a great read. It concentrates upon a sustained and brilliant explication of two books, Moby Dick and Pierre, with brief asides treating other of Melville’s famous works. The central thesis of Mariners, is that Melville was the first great critic of capitalism and totalitarianism on a world scale.

The account of his internment and attitude to Communist Party activists in prison James appended as a last chapter, chapter 7. Yet the version of Mariners published as the Detroit Bewick edition in 1978 lacked this final chapter. In fact ‘chapter 7’ has caused some argument. Some argue it was written to appease anti-communist McCarthyite witch hunters as a

First published in 1958 by a tiny group of James’s supporters in Detroit, Facing Reality was popularized by the Chicago Rebel Worker group, Solidarity Bookshop, and other anti-authoritarians in the 1960s. Later taken up by the SDS journal Radical America in its early IWW/surrealist-oriented period. Writing in collaboration with Cornelius Castoriadis and Grace Lee Boggs, James examines the practical process of social revolution in the aftermath of the Hungarian revolution. A later edition in 1974 includes an introduction by James’s longtime friend, John H. Bracey, situating the book in its 1950s/60s context. “Among the most forward-looking books of the 1950s, Facing Reality is not only a merciless critique of the reactionary rationalism that then passed for Marxism, but also a passionate celebration of workingclass creativity and revolutionary internationalism at their inspired best.” -Franklin Rosemont, author of Revolution in the Service of the Marvelous (2004).

A PDF version of the book is available free to download here.

The jacket cover of the PM Press 2013 edition with an introduction by Noel Ignatiev sums this volume up well.

“Marxists envisage a total change in the basic structure of human relations. With that change our problems will not be solved overnight, but we will be able to tackle them with confidence. Such are the difficulties, contradictions, and antagonisms; and in the solution of them society moves forward and men and women feel they have a role in the development of their social surroundings. It is in this movement that we have the possibility of a good life.” – CLR James, from Modern Politics

This volume provides a brilliant and accessible summation of the ideas of left Marxist giant CLR James. Originally delivered in 1960 as a series of lectures in his native Trinidad, these writings powerfully display his wide ranging erudition and enduring relevance. From his analysis of revolutionary history (from the Athenian City States through the English Revolution, Russian Revolution and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956), to the role of culture in society (from Chaplin to Picasso, via Camus and Eisenstein) to an interrogation of the ideas and philosophy of such thinkers as Rousseau, Lenin and Trotsky, this is a magnificent tour de force from a critically

“Great claims have been made for Beyond a Boundary since its first appearance in 1963: that it is the greatest sports book ever written; that it brings the outsider a privileged insight into West Indian culture; that it is a severe examination of the colonial condition. All are true.” Sunday Times

CLR James, was devoted to the game of cricket. In this classic summation of half a lifetime spent playing, watching and writing about the sport, he recounts the story of his overriding passion and tells us of the players whom he knew and loved, exploring the game’s psychology and aesthetics, and the issues of class, race and politics that surround it. Part memoir of a West Indian boyhood, part passionate celebration and defence of cricket as an art form, part indictment of colonialism, Beyond a Boundary addresses not just a sport but a whole culture to ask the question, ‘What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?’

Beyond a Boundary reached No.3 in the Observer Sport Monthly’s poll of the best fifty sports books of all time.

‘To say “the best cricket book ever written” is pifflingly inadequate praise’ Guardian

‘Anyone who has not encountered