In the summer of 1942 Gollancz came to realise that he and the rest of the world had been seriously underestimating the horrific extent of the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

" Gollancz proposed a series of practical responses, centred around a rescue plan, and undertook a lecture and fundraising tour ; he was also made Vice-President of Eleanor Rathbone's National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror.

Along with Rathbone, Gollancz was the foremost British campaigner during the Second World War on the issue of the Nazi extermination of European Jewry.

This drive against capital punishment would later lead Gollancz to campaign against the execution of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

Gollancz refused to publish it, considering it an attack on the Soviet regime which was a crucial ally in the war.

In the early 1940s, Gollancz was sympathetic to Richard Acland's socialist Common Wealth Party, and gave talks for the group before the general election of 1945.

He was also ( not coincidentally ) made chief reader for Victor Gollancz Ltd., where he was involved in the early publication history of George Orwell.

The Making of the English Working Class is an influential and pivotal work of English social history, written by E. P. Thompson, a notable ' New Left ' historian ; it was published in 1963 ( revised 1968 ) by Victor Gollancz Ltd, and later republished at Pelican, becoming an early Open University Set Book.

By early 1940, however, Gollancz had broken with the CP, a process documented in the articles collected in Betrayal of the Left in early 1941, and from then on the club took a strongly democratic socialist line until its demise in 1948.

Sir Israel Gollancz ( 13 July 1863 – 23 June 1930 ) was a scholar of early English literature and of Shakespeare.

He was disappointed when Gollancz turned down Burmese Days, mainly on the grounds of potential suits for libel, but Harpers were prepared to publish it in the United States.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying was published by Gollancz on 20 April 1936.

At the same time, the communist Daily Worker was running an attack on The Road to Wigan Pier, misquoting Orwell as saying " the working classes smell "; a letter to Gollancz from Orwell threatening libel action brought a stop to this.

* No Stone Unturned: The Story of the Stone of Destiny, Ian R. Hamilton, Victor Gollancz and also Funk and Wagnalls, 1952, 1953, hardcover, 191 pages, An account of the return of the stone to Scotland in 1950 ( older, but more available, look on ABE )

Gollancz proved to be an innovative and inspirational teacher, he introduced the first civics class to be taught at an English public school and many of his students went on to become teachers themselves, including James Harford and James Darling.

Gollancz formed his own publishing company in 1927, publishing works by writers such as Ford Madox Ford and George Orwell ( though Orwell went to Secker and Warburg from Homage to Catalonia on ).

While Gollancz published The Red Army Moves by Geoffrey Cox on the Winter War in 1941, he omitted some criticisms of the USSR.

Gollancz often claimed to be a Christian, although he was never baptised and his understanding of the religion was a highly idiosyncratic one, overall his personal syncretic faith drew on Pelagian Christianity, Judaism, and wide-ranging reading across religious traditions.

In addition to his highly successful publishing business, Gollancz was a prolific writer on a variety of subjects, and put his ideas into action by establishing campaigning groups.

Towards the end of June 1943, Gollancz suffered a serious nervous breakdown, believed to have been brought on by overwork ( he had cut out holidays and reduced his social and cultural life ) and his identification with the Nazis ' victims.

In May 1951, Gollancz invited Harold Wilson to chair an AWP committee and write a pamphlet which was eventually called ' War on Want-a Plan for World Development ', published on 9 June 1952.

This led to the founding of the international anti-poverty charity War on Want ; its parent body, the AWP waned after Gollancz stepped down from the chairmanship in 1952.

" Her biographer Barbara Reynolds quotes a letter she wrote to publisher Victor Gollancz on 14 September 1932:

Based on testimonials of German civilians and military, as well as many interviews with British and American politicians and diplomats who participated at the Potsdam Conference, including Robert Murphy, the political adviser of General Eisenhower, Sir Geoffrey Harrison ( drafter of article XIII of the Potsdam Protocol concerning population transfers ), and Sir Denis Allen ( drafter of article IX on the provisional post-war borders ), the book also describes the crimes committed by the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia, at the end of World War II, and cites the condemnation of the expulsions by Bertrand Russell, Victor Gollancz, Bishop Bell of Chichester and other contemporary intellectuals.

It was submitted to Victor Gollancz, who had an option on Orwell's next three novels, in spite of the ' cold treatment which had been given when Homage to Catalonia was rejected.

Orwell submitted the typescript of Keep the Aspidistra Flying to Gollancz on 15 January 1936.

D. J. Taylor argues that these factors, and the fact that Gollancz was not a person to part with such a sum on speculation, suggest that Gorer was confusing Orwell's eventual earnings from the book with a small contribution for out of pocket expenses that Gollancz might have given him.

At a later date Gollancz published part one on its own, against Orwell's wishes, and he refused to publish Homage to Catalonia at all.

This collection, the ninth in the Lord Peter Wimsey series, was first published by Gollancz in 1933 and has been frequently reprinted ( 1995 paperback: ISBN 978-0-06-104362-8 ).

* First published Victor Gollancz ( 28 August 1933 )

By December 1933 he had typed the final version, and in 1934 he delivered it by motorbike to his agent Leonard Moore for publication by Victor Gollancz, who had published his previous book.

* The Facts of Fiction – 1932 ( Gollancz ) US: 1933 ( Dutton )

In 2000, the British publisher Gollancz Science Fiction issued a two-volume, complete edition of Howard's Conan stories as part of its Fantasy Masterworks imprint, which including several stories that had never seen print in their original form.

Mabel Fierz had pursued matters with Moore, and at the end of June 1932, Moore told Blair that Victor Gollancz was prepared to publish A Scullion's Diary for a £ 40 advance, through his recently founded publishing house, Victor Gollancz Ltd, which was an outlet for radical and socialist works.

Meanwhile he had to cope with rival claims of publishers Gollancz and Warburg for publishing rights.

They were, like those babies, nearly dead from hunger ..." When Field Marshal Montgomery wanted to allot each German citizen a guaranteed diet of only 1, 000 calories a day and justified this by referring to the fact that the prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had received only 800, Gollancz wrote about starvation in Germany, pointing out that many prisoners never even received 1, 000 calories.

Victor married Ruth Gollancz née Lowy-an artist who had studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks.

They had five daughters among them Vita Gollancz, an artist ; Livia Ruth Gollancz, musician and later head of Victor Gollancz LTD ; and Diana Gollancz, a confidante of author Philip Larkin ( Brunette Coleman ).

' In fact Orwell heard in April 1939 that Gollancz had reservations about the book, and was delaying a decision to accept it.

" As a social reformer, a socialist, and an idealist, Gollancz had an unquestioning, perhaps overly optimistic, faith in education ; if only people could be made to know the nature of poverty, he thought, they would want to eradicate it, remove from power the government that tolerated it, and transform the economic system that brought it into being.

He reported that Gollancz had offered Orwell £ 500 to underwrite the trip, and but for Gollancz's support Orwell would never have gone.

In the April 1937 number of the Left News Gollancz reported that the book had produced: " both more, and more interesting, letters than any other Club Choice.

Gollancz ' manuscript had been copied in Amsterdam, in Sephardic cursive script, and is less legible than the BL text.

In 1937, Gollancz published Borneman's " detective story to end detective stories " ( Julian Symons ), a novel entitled The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor, which he had completed before turning twenty.

The script carries a dedication to " Miriam and Diana ": Miriam was an acquaintance with whom Larkin had discussed lesbian relationships, while Diana Gollancz (" Diana G ." in the story ), the daughter of the publisher Victor Gollancz, supplied him with many anecdotes from her schooldays.