Letters to Change the World: From Pankhurst to Orwell

262 Pages·2018·4.16 MB·English

by  Travis Elborough

Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Editor’s Note
Introduction
1. William Wilberforce’s Letter to Thomas Jefferson on Slavery,
1808
2. Elizabeth Fry’s Memorandum on Prisons, 1817
3. Richard Oastler’s Letter to the Leeds Mercury on Child Labour,
1830
4. Karl Marx et al.’s Letter to Abraham Lincoln on his Re-election,
1865
5. Barbara Bodichon’s Correspondence with Helen Taylor on
Women’s Suffrage, 1866
6. Colonel Robert Loyd-Lindsay’s Letter to The Times on War, 1870
7. George Washington Williams’ Letter to King Leopold II of
Belgium on the Congo, 1890
8. Leo Tolstoy’s Letter to Mahatma Gandhi on Passive Resistance,
1910
9. Emmeline Pankhurst’s Letter on Suffragette Militancy, 1913
10. Emily Hobhouse et al.’s Open Letter to the Women of Germany
and Austria, 1914
11. Emma Goldman’s Letter to the Press on Birth Control, 1916
12. Bertrand Russell’s Letter to the Guardian on Conscientious
Objection, 1917
13. Wilfred Owen’s Letter to his Mother on War, 1917
14. Siegfried Sassoon’s Letter to The Times on War, 1917
15. Mahatma Gandhi’s Letter To Every Englishman in India, 1920
16. Virginia Woolf’s Letters to the New Statesman on Women Artists,
1920
17. Various Women’s Letters to Marie Stopes on Birth Control, 1921
18. Amelia Earhart’s Letter to her Future Husband on Marriage, 1931
19. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s Letter to Joseph Stalin on Artistic Freedom,
1931
20. Albert Einstein’s Correspondence with Sigmund Freud on Global
Peace, 1932
21. The Mayor of Jarrow J.W. Thompson’s Letter Calling for Support
for Unemployed Men, 1936
22. Antonio Gramsci’s Letters to his Wife and Son from Prison on
Family, 1936
23. Anaïs Nin’s Letter to Robert Duncan on Homosexuality, 1939
24. A.A. Milne’s Letter to a Correspondent on Pacifism, 1939
25. Albert Camus’ Letters to a German Friend on the Occupation,
1943–4
26. Zora Neale Hurston’s Letter to Countee Cullen on Segregation,
1943
27. George Orwell’s Letter to Noel Willmett on Totalitarianism, 1944
28. Niels Bohr’s Open Letter to the United Nations on Nuclear Arms,
1950
29. Lillian Hellman’s Letter to the House Un-American Activities
Committee on the Fifth Amendment, 1952
30. Paul Robeson’s Open Letter to Jackie Robinson on Civil Rights,
1953
31. Rachel Carson’s Letter to the Washington Post on the Natural
World, 1953
32. Czesław Miłosz’s Open Letter to Pablo Picasso on Communism,
1956
33. Doris Lessing’s Letter to E.P. Thompson on the Communist Party,
1957
34. Tony Dyson et al.’s Letter to The Times on Homosexuality, 1958
35. Alan Paton et al.’s Open Letter to Harold Macmillan on
Apartheid, 1959
36. W.E.B. Du Bois’s Letter to the Communist Party on the Failure of
Capitalism, 1961
37. Nikita Khrushchev’s Letter to John F. Kennedy on the Cuban
Missile Crisis, 1962
38. Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’, 1963
39. Joan Baez’s Open Letter to the Internal Revenue Service on the
Vietnam War, 1964
40. Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s Letter to Fidel Castro on Leaving Cuba,
1965
41. John Steinbeck’s Letter to Ernest Heyn on the Exploration of the
Seas, 1966
42. Ron Ridenhour’s Letter on the My Lai Massacre, 1969
43. Nelson Mandela’s Letter to his Daughters on their Mother’s
Imprisonment, 1969
44. Václav Havel’s Letter to Dr Gustáv Husák on Repression, 1975
45. Red Saunders et al.’s Letter to the Music Press on Racism in Rock
Music, 1976
46. Armistead Maupin’s ‘Letter to Mama’ on Coming Out, 1977
47. Harvey Milk’s Letter to Jimmy Carter on Gay Rights, 1978
48. The Women of Greenham Common’s Letter to Women on
Nuclear War, 1981
49. Deirdre Rhys-Thomas’s Letter to Dr Benjamin Spock on Nuclear
War, 1985
50. Olusegun Obasanjo’s Letter to Margaret Thatcher on Apartheid,
1986
51. Alex Molnar’s Letter to the New York Times on the Gulf War,
1990
52. Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez’s Letter to the New York Times on
Terrorism, 2001
53. Tilda Swinton’s Letter to the Late Derek Jarman on Art, 2002
54. Alice Walker’s Open Letter to Barack Obama on his Election,
2008
55. Tony Benn’s Letter to his Grandchildren on Changing the World,
2009
56. Stephen Fry’s Open Letter to David Cameron and the
International Olympic Committee on Homophobia, 2013
57. Edward Snowden’s Open Letter on Mass Surveillance, 2013
58. Benedict Cumberbatch et al.’s Open Letter to David Cameron
Calling for the Pardon of Gay and Bisexual Men, 2015
59. Ziauddin Yousafzai’s Letter to the Parents of the Abducted
Chibok Girls on Female Education, 2015
60. Mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti et al.’s Letter to Donald
Trump on Climate Change, 2016
61. Patrick Millsaps’ Open Letter to Ariana Grande on the Manchester
Terrorist Attack, 2017
62. Time’s Up’s Letter to the New York Times on Sexual Harassment,
2018
Permissions
Copyright
About the Book
‘We know through painful experience that freedom is never
voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the
oppressed’ Martin Luther King
In an era where the liberties we often take for granted are under threat,
Letters To Change the World is a collection of inspiring letters
offering reminders from history that standing up for and voicing our
personal and political beliefs is not merely a crucial right but a duty if
we want to change the world.
Edited by Travis Elborough, the collection includes George Orwell’s
warning on totalitarianism, Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from a
Birmingham Jail’, Albert Camus on the reasons to fight a war,
Bertrand Russell on peace, Emmeline Pankhurst rallying her
suffragettes, Nelson Mandela’s letter to his children from prison and
Time’s Up on the abuse of power.
About the Author
Described as ‘one of Britain’s finest pop culture historians’ by The
Guardian, Travis Elborough has been a freelance writer, author,
broadcaster and cultural commentator for nearly two decades, and
frequently appears on BBC Radio 4 and Five Live. His books include
a history of London’s iconic Routemaster bus, The Bus We Loved
(2005) and London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a
Transatlantic Crossing (2013). A Walk in the Park: The Life and
Times of a People’s Institution was published to great acclaim in
2016, with William Boyd declaring it ‘a fascinating, informative,
revelatory book’. Our History of the 20th Century: As Told in Diaries,
Journals and Letters (2017) was hailedby David Kynaston as ‘a
wonderfully curated collection of intimate diary voices: rich in their
variousness, compelling in their impact, and cumulatively giving us a
fresh and thought-provoking version of twentieth-century Britain’.

Editor’s Note
Letters have been edited in places for length, clarity and sense but
where possible the authors’ spellings and grammar have been retained
to remain as true as possible to the original correspondence.