Blackwell Reference Online

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John Henry Mackay was a Scottish-German author chiefly known in his lifetime for his propagandistic writings on individualist anarchism and his influential biography of German philosopher Max Stirner, which introduced Stirner's philosophy of egoism outside Germany. Today, he may be best known for his poems set to music by Richard Strauss and his series of books written to attain understanding and acceptance of homosexual love. Mackay was in his early twenties when his first poems and short stories were published. In 1888 Sturm , his volume of revolutionary verse, appeared. It sold well and earned him notoriety as “the first singer of Anarchy” ( Mackay 1999 : 2). Around this time he came under the influence of American publisher Benjamin Tucker and German philosopher Max Stirner, both proponents of individualist anarchism. Tucker had begun to publish Libertas , a German edition of his anarchist journal Liberty , and would become Mackay's American publisher. In addition, Mackay read Max Stirner's Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Ego and Its Own) , which would transform his earlier ideas on anarchism and lead to his 1898 study of Stirner. After living in London from 1887 to 1888, Mackay moved to Switzerland, where he wrote Die Anarchisten (The Anarchists). While capitalizing on his first-hand observations of London's social movement, radical clubs, and extreme poverty, Mackay ... log in or subscribe to read full text