Story: Arts and the nation

Progressive Books was a co-operative bookshop that opened in Auckland in 1936 to sell left-wing and progressive literature. The shop was run by Jack Basham (shown at rear) and his wife Doris. Along with left-wing book clubs and Tomorrowmagazine, the co-operative bookshops that opened in the main centres by 1943 represented a strongly internationalist socialist perspective, which was rather distinct from the views of most cultural nationalists of the period.