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The cooperative book movement was born of the same heightened political atmosphere as the Left Book Club, the sense of urgency and political will created by the Spanish Civil War and impending political crisis in Europe. Like the Left Book Club it was founded on a conception of the cultural as well as political dimension of that crisis, and on a belief in the power of informed public opinion as an effective political force. Wrote the Wellington Co-operative Book Society in a 1939 publicity leaflet: 'We believe that the present time, when over great parts of the world liberty of thought and conscience is being extinguished, calls more than ever before for the development of every possible agency to promote thought and discussion'.¹ The Auckland Progressive Book Society stated the argument rather more blundy in an advertisement in Tomorrow.

There will be no literature and little life for the mass of mankind for many a weary day if the fascists win.. .. There is, all seeming levity notwithstanding, a close connection between being red-hot and being well read.²

Although they were also a direct development of the Popular Front politics of the late 30s, the cooperative book societies proved a more enduring presence in the New Zealand book trade than the Left Book Club. In Auckland and Christchurch the co-op book societies survived until the 1980s; the Wellington society was wound up in 1970; the Dunedin society, a briefer venture, in 1954. This chapter, however, takes their history only to the end of the 1940s. Their subsequent development is described in a short postscript.