William Reeves

William Reeves III (1853–1937) was an English publisher, printer, and bookseller associated with late-Victorian radical publishing. Based in London, he issued political and social literature from 185 Fleet Street and published the Bellamy Library of Fact and Fiction, a series of inexpensive radical and socialist texts in the 1890s. He also issued the authorised English version of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1888.

Career Reeves was one of six children of the publisher and bookseller William Dobson Reeves. After an apprenticeship with the Manchester bookseller William Hayes, he returned to London. When Reeves married Elizabeth Tapley in 1875, his father handed over to him a branch bookshop at 185 Fleet Street.

From Fleet Street, Reeves developed a business in political and social literature, Masonic textbooks, and music. Reeves & Turner, the firm established by his father, remained active until 1893 and published works on social and political subjects, including the first edition of William Morris's News from Nowhere in 1891. Reeves later reissued some books and journals first published by the family firm.

Bellamy Library of Fact and Fiction Reeves published the Bellamy Library of Fact and Fiction, a series of 33 fictional and non-fictional radical works issued between 1890 and about the turn of the 20th century. The series was built around Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and was intended to make political literature financially accessible to working-class activists and lower-middle-class radicals.

The books were generally issued in small, inexpensive formats, with standard paper-covered editions sold for one shilling and some titles available more cheaply or in more expensive bindings. Beaumont describes the series as a systematic contribution to the political self-education of the labour movement.