The Open Society and Its Enemies.

POPPER, Karl R. .

Item Number: 6007

London: George Rutledge & Sons, 1945.

First editions of the author’s magnum opus. Octavo, original cloth. Inscribed by Karl Popper in volume 1, “To Mrs. Anstey from K.R.P.” The recipient was noted economist and fried of Popper, Vera Anstey. She taught at the London School of Economics and was an expert on the Indian economy. Also, included is a full page signed letter from Karl Popper to the Anstey, with the original addressed envelope in Popper’s hand. Near fine in the rare original first state dust jackets with vol. I with “Age of Plato” rather than “Spell of Plato, which was changed in Popper’s hand on the front panel, with wear and chips to the extremities. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box.

One of the most important books of the twentieth century, Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies is an uncompromising defense of liberal democracy and a powerful attack on the intellectual origins of totalitarianism. Popper was born in 1902 to a Viennese family of Jewish origin. He taught in Austria until 1937, when he emigrated to New Zealand in anticipation of the Nazi annexation of Austria the following year, and he settled in England in 1949. Before the annexation, Popper had written mainly about the philosophy of science, but from 1938 until the end of the Second World War he focused his energies on political philosophy, seeking to diagnose the intellectual origins of German and Soviet totalitarianism. The Open Society and Its Enemies was the result.