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Louis Sinclair
– Survey –

Louis Sinclair (1909-1990)

Here you can find a feature about Louis Sinclair (1909-1990), author of a monumental bibliography of Leon Trotsky's written legacy as well as of some other bibliographical works which must be considered as unique and indispensable tools with regard to Trotsky research.

The meaning of Louis Sinclair — Biographical sketch

Louis Solomon, who officially assumed the name Louis Sinclair only in 1946, was born as one of seven children into a Jewish working class family in Glasgow on July 28, 1909. His father, Hyman Solomon (born Poznanski) had come as an immigrant from Russian Poland to Scotland around 1900 where he got the name Solomon. After school education in Glasgow and studies in Leeds (England), for several decades Louis earned his living as a primary school teacher, specialising in teaching children with impaired hearing. Having abondoned religiousness as well as Zionism he became a Marxist socialist and trade unionist, and eventually was recruited (around 1938) to the Glasgow branch of a tiny British Trotskyist organization affiliated to theMovement for the Fourth International. Already in uniform during the Second World War, he won over some people to the cause of Trotskyism; he took part in fighting the Nazi-German troops in Egypt and Northern Africa, and while on military service in Italy 1943/44 he together with Charles VanGelderen made close contacts with militants of the Italian Trotskyist resistance movement. After the war he became a member of the RCP (Revolutionary Communist Party), the newly formed British Section of the Fourth International. After the RCP had collapsed in 1949, Sinclair did not join any other Trotskyist organization but remained until his death a close non-sectarian supporter of Trotskyism, morally, politically and last not least materially.
He began to correspond with Trotskyist militants, with librarians, archivists, book collectors and book dealers all over the world and held close contacts to Trotskyist veterans and scholars like George Breitman, Pierre Broué, Pierre Frank, Charles VanGelderen, Hillel Ticktin, Wang Fanxi. He was an outstanding Trotskyist intellectual whose very interest was the preservation of the heritage of the International Left Opposition, bringing back to light the truth about the life, ideas and meaning of Leon Trotsky. Sinclair's contribution to the recorded history of the 20th century was excellently summarized in the caption of an obituary by his just mentioned friend and comrade Charles VanGelderen, published in the British daily Guardian on July 30, 1990: "Louis Sinclair - the complete Trotsky collector".

Louis Sinclair, who lived in Glasgow (Herriet Street 13) und who was neither married nor had any descendants, spent several decades of his life collecting extensively and systematically the published writings of Leon Trotsky in more than 40 languages. With no grants from foundations to fund his travelling expenses he visited uncountable libraries and archives in Europe and America and his name was quite familiar to many second-hand book dealers all over the world. In 1972 Hoover Institution Press (Stanford, Cal.) published his painstaking and pioneering work Leon Trotsky - a bibliography, a huge volume of some 1.100 pages. From that time Sinclair's collection and cataloguing activities had to be acknowledged by every serious student and scholar dealing with the life and work of Trotsky. During the next 2 decades and after having retired from his teaching job, Sinclair continued his work on the Trotsky Bibliography as well as on some related bibliographical works, ceaselessly and meticulously searching for more and new material. He also acted as an unpaid adviser and as an honorary research fellow of the Institute of Soviet and East European Studies (Glasgow University), continuing his collaboration with scholars in Britain, the United States, France and elsewhere, thus establishing a worldwide reputation in the field of Trotsky research. Recognition by noted scholars, students and by Glasgow University to which he contributed his personal library and manuscripts (1983), the Louis Sinclair Collection, as well as events like the opening of the so-called closed section of the Trotsky Archives at Houghton Library (Harvard University, Boston, Mass., 1980) or the sensational discovering of parts of another Trotsky archive within the Boris Nicolaevsky Collection at Stanford University (1987) gave him pleasure in the last years of his life after decades of work in which he had to endure a certain isolation. During those last years of his life Sinclair considerably updated his Trotsky bibliography which eventually was published by Scolar Press (Aldershot, Britain) as a two-volume set comprising some 1.350 pages (1989). During the year 1988 Sinclair's health began failing and after a short period of partial recovery he was hospitalized in Glasgow where he died of pleurisy and other complications on July 7, 1990, three weeks before his 81st birthday. A memorial meeting was held in the Adam Smith Building (University of Glasgow) on September 28, 1990.

We, the authors of TrotskyanaNet, did neither know Louis Sinclair personally nor did we enjoy a letter-exchange with him, with the exception of a few business-like letters. Nevertheless we wish to emphasize our deep respect for Louis Sinclair and his life's great work. We studied and used Sinclair's Trotsky bibliography intensively and carefully and always regarded it as an indispensable tool, a necessary prerequisite for everybody doing serious research on Trotsky. Furthermore we always felt a certain Wahlverwandtschaft with Sinclair, considering our own bibliographical work (on the Trotsky secondary literature) as complementary to Sinclair's work (on Trotsky's primary works) — and users/reviewers have interpreted it just that way [see for instance the quotations from reviews cited in the chapter The Lubitz Trotsky Bibliography].We were deeply impressed by Sinclair's outstanding personality, regarding him as a mentor in spiritu by his great bibliographical labour of love. The entire Trotsky community should honor this quite uncommon, unpretentious and perhaps a bit queer man as one if its most dignified and devoted members whose monumental work will undoubtedly survive him.

We should like to finish this paragraph by a short quotation from the book The ideas of Leon Trotsky (London, 1995):

"This volume is dedicated to Louis Sinclair. Louis was a lifetime Trotskyist who dedicated the last 30 or so years of his life to producing a comprehensive bibliography of Trotsky's writings. He never asked for any recognition, and he even gave his collection of Trotskyana to Glasgow University free of charge, without any indication on the books from whence they came. Louis was a very modest man, who saw himself as making his contribution to the struggle for socialism through his bibliographic work. He provided a chronological list of the works of Trotsky in the various languages, as well as a list of republications of Trotsky's works over the world. The first was probably more interesting to scholars, while the second served the purpose of the revolutionary movement in pinpointing the gradual rehabilitation of Trotsky himself. Louis was very excited that Trotsky was finally republished in the USSR. In a sense, Louis' work was never over." [Ticktin, H. and Cox, M.: Louis Sinclair (1909-1990), in: Ticktin, Hillel and Michael Cox (ed.): The ideas of Leon Trotsky, London, 1995, p.2.

Literature about Louis Sinclair
(obituaries, biographical sketches, etc.)

Following his death in July 1990 some obituaries, biographical sketches and reminiscences were published, providing some details about the personal background, character, and itinerary of the man who was 'the complete Trotsky collector' and the author/compiler of the unrivaled Trotsky Bibliography. Here's a listing of the biographical items about Louis Sinclair which are in our possession.

Perhaps the most interesting biographical contribution is a sentimental but highly informative portrait written by Dutch journalist Igor Cornelissen who had met Sinclair several times and who also made interviews with relatives, friends and comrades; thus his contribution (titled Bibliograaf van de wereldrevolutie [Bibliographer of the world revolution]) mentions a lot of biographical details as well as some facts on family background not to be found anywhere else; unfortunately there is no English translation of Cornelissen's contribution [PDF, 1874 Kb] which we have reprinted here with permission of Vrij Nederland.

Books dedicated to Louis Sinclair:

The works of Louis Sinclair

During the last three decades of his life, Louis Sinclair produced a number of outstanding bibliographical works about Leon Trotsky and about the genesis of the (Trotskyist) Fourth International. From these works, only Leon Trotsky : a bibliography (1972) and Trotsky : a bibliography (1989) were printed and published in book form, while the other works only exist as manuscripts (typescripts) in a very limited number of mimeographed copies; that means that apart from Glasgow University Library — the repository of the Sinclair papers — there are only a few libraries and archives which are in possession of them. We are proud that — with the exception of Records of Leon Trotsky &mdash all works by Louis Sinclair listed here are represented in our own Trotskyana Collection.

Here's the listing of Sinclair's bibliographical works in chronological order and with some short annotations:

Louis Sinclair occasionally contributed to some journals, for example to Soviet Studies (Oxford, later: Glasgow) and Critique (Glasgow). He also contributed an obituary of his very friend and colleague George Breitman which was published in A tribute to George Breitman / ed. by Naomi Allen and Sarah Lovell, New York, NY, 1987.

Reviews of Louis Sinclair's works

Since its appearance in 1972 Sinclair's Trotsky : a bibliography of course has been used by many students and scholars doing research on Trotsky and Trotskyism; there is hardly to find a serious scholarly or academic work on Trotsky which fails to mention Sinclair's bibliography in the list of used sources and literature. Furthermore there is a number of books whose authors have shown their very gratitude towards Sinclair by mentioning his magnum opus in prefaces or introductions. Last not least there are some — chiefly favourable — reviews of his Trotsky : a bibliography (both of the 1972 and of the 1989 editions), published in journals and newsletters.

Here's a listing, arranged alphabetically by author, of those reviews of Sinclair's work which are in our possession:

Please find here some quotations from a selection of the above-mentioned reviews:

[George Novack, in: International Socialist Review, 33.1972 (7):]
Isaac Deutscher wrote a full-scale record of Trotsky's life in three volumes that set a lofty biographical standard. Now Louis Sinclair has compiled a catalogue of all Trotsky's known published materials that deserves to stand beside Deutscher's trilogy on the shelves of every large library and serious student of his career. [...] Sinclair had to make his way through this obstacle course, tracking down the existence and publication places of the books, pamphlets, articles, speeches, letters, and other Trotsky materials that have been translated into various languages. The result of this tireless and persistent detective work is this bibliography of over a thousand pages. [...] Sinclair's achievement is the more remarkable since, for all the assistance he received from other people and librarians, it was the enterprise of a single individual, carried to completion apparently without subsidy or aid from any academic institution or foundation. [...] Thus the vast and valuable heritage of Trotsky's ideas is made much more accessible and the present generation can verify precisely where he stood on the vital issues of the class struggle. All future students of Trotsky's life and work will be indebted to Sinclair's encyclopedic labors.
[Ladis K.D. Kristof, in: Slavic Review, 32.1973 (4):]
Now Trotsky has found his man in Louis Sinclair, whose bibliography is obviously a labor of love. In scope, Sinclair's work is an ambitious undertaking. [...] The sheer amount of labor invested in this volume is awesome, and virtually every student of the Russian revolution broadly speaking will be able to draw dividends. Yet as a whole the book is disappointing. The system of listing, reference, cross reference, and concordance, though ingenious in certain respects, is difficult to understand and not clearly or sufficiently explained in the preface and notes. There are also some puzzles. [...] The listings of location for various volumes often seem a frivolously useless exercise. [...] More disturbing are innumerable inaccurate or even totally misleading translations of Russian entries. [...] In my opinion, the main weakness of the book is that it has an overabundance of marginal and outright useless information which merely obscures what is really valuable and necessary. On the title page the Hoover Institution Press notes that this volume is 'unabridged and unedited' in order to 'make it available to scholars more promptly and economically'.
[Leo van Rossum, in: International Review of Social History, 36.1991 (1):]
The quantities are impressive indeed, and the method employed, of strict chronological presentation, with references to later reprints and/or translations, also turns out to be a valuable and useful approach in the 1989 summary, which has three times as many items as its precursor. The frequency with which visitors to the reading room of the IISG library resort to Sinclair's book confirms this. Remarkably, as a result of the publication of the reference works by Sinclair and W. Lubitz, there is now more bibliographical material available on Trotsky than on Lenin or Stalin. After nearly thirty years of continued bibliographical research on Trotsky and on the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s it must have been a source of great satisfaction to Sinclair to have had the opportunity to round off his work with this Scolar Press edition. Shortly after it was published he died, on 7 July 1990, at the age of 81.
[Pierre Frank, in: Quatrième Internationale, n.s. 1972 (5=55):]
Alors que telles publications sont généralement l'oeuvre de plusieurs personnes soutenues par des institutions scientifiques disposant de moyens matériels et financiers, la bibliographie a été faite par Sinclair seul, sans aucun collaborateur régulier, en dehors des heures qu'il consacrait à gagner son existence. Le travail minutieux qu'il a accompli, les recherches, les mises au point, les vérifications ont occupé plusieurs dizaines d'années de sa vie. Il l'a fait avec une persévérance infatigable. Il a fallu que son travail commence à atteindre une certaine dimension pour que l'importance et la valeur en soient enfin appréciées. Louis Sinclair a accompli un travail scientifique remarquable sur l'oeuvre de Trotsky dont il est meilleur connaisseur. Plus encore, il a rendu par ce travail un service inestimable à cette oeuvre. A ce titre, les trotskystes lui en sont profondément reconnaissants.
[Reiner Tosstorff, in: Archiv für die Geschichte des Widerstandes und der Arbeit, 1991 (11):]
Der im Juli 1990 im Alter von fast 81 Jahren verstorbene Louis Sinclair gehörte zu denjenigen Privatforschern, die, außerhalb des akademischen Betriebs stehend, sich ganz einem einzigen Gegenstand widmen, über den sie dann mehr wissen als die Fachgelehrten. Sinclair [...] befasste sich mit dem Werk Trotzkis und trug alle seine Schriften zusammen, aus welchem Land und in welcher Sprache auch immer. Ergebnis dieser Arbeit ist eine Bibliographie aller veröffentlichten und - soweit die entsprechenden Archive zugänglich sind - unveröffentlichten Texte Trotzkis, die erstmals 1972 erschien. Nun wird sie in erweiterter Form vorgelegt. [...] Zweifellos handelt es sich um ein unentbehrliches Hilfsmittel nicht nur für die Beschäftigung mit Trotzki, sondern auch allgemein mit der Geschichte des Kommunismus und der Sowjetunion in der Zwischenkriegszeit. Die Neuausgabe war von seinem Verfasser sicher als die auf absehbare Zeit definitive Ausgabe gedacht. Doch in den letzten Monaten beginnt die Wiederentdeckung Trotzkis in der Sowjetunion. Es werden nicht nur seine im Westen bekannten Werke veröffentlicht, zum ersten Mal werden die Archive geöffnet, und sowjetische Wissenschaftler können vor allem bisher unbekannte Materialien aus den Fraktionskämpfen der zwanziger Jahre auswerten.

Some illustrations

Here you can find reproductions of one of the rare existing photographs (taken by Hans van den Bogaard) of Louis Sinclair, showing him in his seventies, and of a pencil drawing from 1983 by Paul Harber,  a son of the late Denzil Dean Harber (1909-1965), a well-known British Trotskyist. Both pictures have been reproduced here by permission of the University Library of Glasgow, Special Collections Department.

Louis Sinclair (1909-1990), drawingPhotograph of Louis Sinclair (1909-1990)

Furthermore we reproduce here an autograph [PDF, 55 Kb], i.e. a hand-written business-like letter from Louis Sinclair to Petra Lubitz dated February 19, 1980.

Short note on Igor Cornelissen:
Igor Cornelissen, Dutch Trotskyist and journalist was born in 1935. From 1962 to 1996 he was a staff writer and co-editor of the renowned Dutch weekly Vrij Nederland. He also is author of some books, among others:

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