1995 was a sad year due to the death of our beloved friend and comrade George Woodcock, who was admired and celebrated by Canada's literati for his tremendous outpouring of work in the area of literature.
A person of unquenchable curiosity whose annual output was indefatigable, whose prolific drive and commitment exhausted us younger folk when we received a letter from him indicating work in progress on another new book or subject-matter. Woodcock was an author of international renown, and an editor, poet, critic, and essayist. But in everything he wrote and said the leitmotif would always show the quest of human beings for genuine freedom and if the subject-matter on hand permitted he would also show how freedom would manifest itself in social organization through solidarity, co-operation, mutual aid. Such would be his approach whether he was writing travelogues, histories, biographies, literature.
Woodcock was profoundly educated politically and consequently everything he engaged himself in was carefully selected. This approach, and philosophical perspective was not generally understood by most of his admirers in the world of the arts since most literati are politically illiterate in this day and age, unfortunately. Above all George Woodcock was an anarchist, one who enriched this movement of ideas in a very significant way. Principled yet undogmatic, he had strong positions yet was tolerate of other approaches to libertarian change. Like all well known anarchists he was not popular within the movement. He published over 140 books in his lifetime, and he probably had as many more to write.
BLACK ROSE BOOKS is particularly proud to have worked with him over the years, having published and re-published several of his works. But the crowning achievement of our creative relationship was the publishing of The Collective Works of Peter Kropotkin, under Woodcock's editorship. These eleven volumes are a testimony to the memory of George Woodcock and to his great teacher and mentor, Peter Kropotkin, whose influence is ever present. Posthumously, we published the last of the series, Evolution and Environment which Woodcock put together with considerable excitement as he had discovered these writings of Kropotkin buried away somewhere but relevant and useful to us today. Published in June 1995, the publication is dedicated to George.
