La peste religiosa [The Religious Plague]. La Libreria Rossa: New York, [n.d.].
Title
La peste religiosa [The Religious Plague]. La Libreria Rossa: New York, [n.d.].
Description
This anti-clerical tract by Johann Joseph Most (b. Augsburg (Bavaria) 1846 - d. Cincinatti, OH 1906) begins: "Among the many mental diseases that man has set into his mind, the religious plague [or "pest" or "nuisance"] is certainly the most horrible one."
Most lived a colorful life, to put it mildly, a bookbinder before he became a writer and publisher, and as a militant atheist, revolutionary socialist turned anarchist, an orator and politician. He popularized the concept of "propaganda of the deed." He moved his newspaper Freiheit from Germany to London and then to New York. He was imprisoned in London for an editorial cheering the assassination of Russian Tsar Alexander II, and in New York, for affirming that it was no crime to assassinate a ruler like President McKinley.
Note the rear cover photo advertisement of other offerings of Carlo Tresca's Libreria Rossa, featuring categories not seen elsewhere, e.g., Collezione Barbausse (Henri Barbusse?) and Romanzi Anticlericali Illustrati, rather than the more typical Libreria Amena and the like. Other Libreria Rossa publications available for sale at Il Martello's offices at 208 East 12th Street in Manhattan included in its classical offerings Shakespeare in translation, and, among non-radical Italian writers, Boccaccio and Benvenuto Cellini.
For a while, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were adherents of Most, but they turned against him when he criticized them, perhaps out of jealousy.
He appears to have become an American citizen, as references to him call him "German-American."
The publisher of this copy of the work, as noted, was Tresca's "Libreria Rossa," in its "Opuscolo di Propaganda" series. I find no other copies in this edition in libraries. But Most's tract appears to have been printed and reprinted many times and in many languages since its apparent creation in 1880, including in 1901 in Paterson, NJ (in Italian) as well as New York, and in a half-dozen locations in Italy, and in Barcelona, as late as 1960.
One Italian copy notes that it was translated from the French, although one imagines that at least in 1880, while he was still in Germany, Most would have composed the work in German. Indeed, we find a German copy, Die Gottespest, published in Chicago in the 1930s by the Progress Publishing Company, and an earlier edition in German in 1901 in Leeds, while Most was living in England. Besides Barcelona, a Spanish edition was published in Cleveland, OH in 1928, years after Most's death.
Most lived a colorful life, to put it mildly, a bookbinder before he became a writer and publisher, and as a militant atheist, revolutionary socialist turned anarchist, an orator and politician. He popularized the concept of "propaganda of the deed." He moved his newspaper Freiheit from Germany to London and then to New York. He was imprisoned in London for an editorial cheering the assassination of Russian Tsar Alexander II, and in New York, for affirming that it was no crime to assassinate a ruler like President McKinley.
Note the rear cover photo advertisement of other offerings of Carlo Tresca's Libreria Rossa, featuring categories not seen elsewhere, e.g., Collezione Barbausse (Henri Barbusse?) and Romanzi Anticlericali Illustrati, rather than the more typical Libreria Amena and the like. Other Libreria Rossa publications available for sale at Il Martello's offices at 208 East 12th Street in Manhattan included in its classical offerings Shakespeare in translation, and, among non-radical Italian writers, Boccaccio and Benvenuto Cellini.
For a while, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were adherents of Most, but they turned against him when he criticized them, perhaps out of jealousy.
He appears to have become an American citizen, as references to him call him "German-American."
The publisher of this copy of the work, as noted, was Tresca's "Libreria Rossa," in its "Opuscolo di Propaganda" series. I find no other copies in this edition in libraries. But Most's tract appears to have been printed and reprinted many times and in many languages since its apparent creation in 1880, including in 1901 in Paterson, NJ (in Italian) as well as New York, and in a half-dozen locations in Italy, and in Barcelona, as late as 1960.
One Italian copy notes that it was translated from the French, although one imagines that at least in 1880, while he was still in Germany, Most would have composed the work in German. Indeed, we find a German copy, Die Gottespest, published in Chicago in the 1930s by the Progress Publishing Company, and an earlier edition in German in 1901 in Leeds, while Most was living in England. Besides Barcelona, a Spanish edition was published in Cleveland, OH in 1928, years after Most's death.
Creator
Johann Most
Citation
Johann Most, “La peste religiosa [The Religious Plague]. La Libreria Rossa: New York, [n.d.].,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed February 8, 2026, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/630.
Comments