Individual Liberty - Evernote

EDITOR'S FOREWORD
For a number of years practically all of the literature of Individualist Anarchism has
been out of print. The great bulk of whatever matter there was had, of course, been in
the hands of Benjamin R. Tucker, and up to 1908 it was being constantly augmented
by him. But when, in January of that year, his entire wholesale stock of publications,
manuscripts, etc., and nearly all of his plates were wiped out by fire, the loss was
irreparable, and little attempt has been made to replace any of the material destroyed.
The demand for something representative of Individualist Anarchism has become so
insistent that it has been determined to produce at least one volume of the best matter
available, and in that volume to attempt to cover the whole subject.
The nearest that any book ever came to answering that description is Tucker's
"Instead of a Book", first published in 1893, culled from his writings in his periodical,
Liberty, and out of print since 1908. This closely printed volume of nearly 500 pages
was composed of questions and criticisms by his correspondents and by writers in
other periodicals, all answered by the editor of Liberty in that keen, clear-cut style that
was the delight of his adherents and the despair of his opponents.
In casting about for material for the proposed volume, therefore, no other writings
than those of Benjamin R. Tucker could for a moment be considered, and it is no
exaggeration to say that they stand high above everything else that has been written
on the subject, not even excepting the works of Josiah Warren, Proudhon, and
Lysander Spooner, or of any other person who has ever attempted to expound the
principles of Individualist Anarchism.
Mr. Tucker is an educated and cultured man. His literary style is both fluent and
elegant, his statements concise and accurate, his arguments logical and convincing,
and his replies terse yet courteous. The reader is never at a loss to know what he
means. There is not a word too much or too little. Every sentence is rounded and
complete - not a redundant syllable or a missing punctuation mark. What he writes is
a joy to read, even when the reader himself is the victim of his withering sarcasm or
caustic satire.
A brief resume of Mr. Tucker's life will serve to indicate the background of his
remarkable personality. He was born in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, April 17,
1854, the son of Abner R. Tucker, owner and outfitter of whale ships and later a
grocer in New Bedford. His mother was Caroline A. Cummings, his father's second
wife, and Benjamin was their only child. The father was of Quaker parents and the
mother was a Unitarian, and an able, progressive and radical woman, her father
having been a pronounced admirer of Thomas Paine.
At two years Tucker was reading English fluently and at four gleefully discovered that
the Episcopal Prayer Book had misquoted the Bible. At sixteen he had finished the
course at the Friends' Academy, and, while at first refusing to go to any college, he
finally spent two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Boston). After
hearing Josiah Warren speak and Col. William B. Greene quote Proudhon at a
convention of the New England Labor Reform League in Boston in 1872, he soon
became an Anarchist and translated Proudhon's "What Is Property?" from the French.