The son of Jewish German immigrants, John Edelman became a respected architect, according to Paul Avrich. After working in Chicago in Louis Sullivan’s firm, in the 1870s, he came in 1886 to New York to organize Henry George’s New York mayoral campaign which advocated the single-tax on land. He also worked with Alfred Zucker, a successful commercial architect.
In 1890 he was a member of the Anti-Poverty Society and became a regular lecturer of the American Branch of the New York Socialist Labor Party.
Edelmann became an anarchist after studying Bakunin. [1]Expelled from the socialist party, on account of his anarchist ideas, he founded in 1893 the Socialist League, a New York anarchist organization with John C. Kenworthy, who would become a noted English Tolstoyan, William C. Owen, another prominent anarchist who contributed to the London Commonweal, and a few other people.. This group was structured on the model of the English Socialist League, with which it corresponded and to which some of the members sent articles.
John Edelman became the editor of Solidarity, An International Review of Anarchist-Communism. When Peter Kropotkin visited the United States, in 1897, he was received in his home.
Edelmann married Rachelle Krimont, an Eastern European immigrant whose family were radicals. After his death, in the New York heat wave of 1900, she went to live at the Whiteway colony where she raised their two children, John and Sonia Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices, pp. 485-486 n. 88. Her younger sister married the anarchist Harry Kelly.

Bibliography of John H. Edelmann

– Pessimism of modern architecture.
[New York 1892] p. 44-54 illus. 24 cm.

Columbia University Libraries, Call Number: AA705 Ed27.

– (ed.) Solidarity, An International Review of Anarchist-Communism
Articles
– "Caution," Solidarity, 9 (Oct. 22, 1892). (On propaganda)
– "To the Readers of Solidarity," Solidarity, 22 (July 29, 1893), p. 1.
– "To the Unemployed," Solidarity, 23 (Aug. 26, 1893).
– "Labor Day. (An undelivered speech)," The Rebel, Boston, I (Sept. 1895) p. 1-2.
– "Letter" Solidarity (March 1, 1895). (A criticism of the single-tax movement).
– "Notes" ibid p. 4-5.
– "The International Congress," The Rebel, Boston, I, 20 (Oct. 1895), p. 9.
– "Notes" ibid. p. 14.
– "Notes" The Rebel, Boston, I, 3 (Nov. 1895) p. 26-27.
– "Notes" The Rebel, Boston, I, 4 (Jan. 1896) p. 38-40.
– "Comment" The Rebel, Boston, I, 5 (Feb. 1896) p. 49.
– "Notes" ibid. p. 50-52.
– "The Commune of Paris,"The Rebel, Boston, I, 6 (March-Apr. 1896) p. 58-59.

"But sad to say, the great mass of radicals had no ideal beyond so-called self government, the mere political freedom, this was all they offered to the people. High sounding words, sonorous phrases, nothing essential. The treasures in the Bank of France were not confiscated […] If the Commune had proclaimed the abolition of private property, if Communism had been actually inaugurated, if the great mass of toiling slaves had been given a taste of real freedom, of the new social life, the life of all for one and one for all, rest assured, Paris would have been an ash heap, a mighty tomb for its inhabitants before either Thiers or Bismark rode in as conqueror."

– "Notes" ibid. p. 62-64.

References to John H. Edelmann

AVRICH, Paul, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (Princeton University Press), 1996:155
– id. The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States, (2005:193).
– FALK, Candace & Barry PATEMAN, Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years (University of California Press) 2003:99.
– The Rebel: an Anarchist-Communist Journal Devoted to the Solution of the Labor question The Rebel, 1895-96
– "John H. Edelmann," Wikipedia