ABSTRACT
Early in 1889 the Executive Committee of the Fabian Society issued its printed report for the Annual Business Meeting. In this modest, four-page document occurred an announcement that the course of lectures on The Basis and Prospects of Socialism , delivered in the previous autumn session, was to be published in book form. Everything that is usually implied by the authorship and editing of a book has in this case been done by the seven essayists, associated in the Executive Council of the Fabian Society, and not one of the essays could be what it is had the writer been a stranger to his six colleagues and to the Society. Ever since the revival of the Fabian Society, which occurred in 1939, projects for a new series of Fabian Essays have been under discussion. The task was not an easy one.
