Conquest

Conquest: Or, A Piece of Jade (1917) is a drama in three acts by Marie Stopes. Although Stopes is more widely known as the author of Married Love or Love in Marriage, a bestselling work on contraception that guided generations of men and woman on how to nurture happy, healthy sexual relationships, she was also a gifted playwright and poet. Conquest: Or, A Piece of Jade, set in rural New Zealand and London, investigates themes of colonialism, pacifism, and romance. “But I answer you lads, what language do we speak? English! What race are we? Britons! Why, lads, the British over there aren’t as British as we are; They are English and Scotch and Irish and Welsh―but what are we? All these British strains mixed! Most of us have some Scotch blood and some English blood and some Irish blood mixed in our veins, many of us have been to other parts of Britain and got a touch of Canada, or Australia, or South Africa into us.” While working on their sheep farm in rural New Zealand, Gordon and Robert Hyde are visited by a military recruiter sent to gather men for the fight against Germany. Despite his patriotic fervor, Gordon is denied enlistment because of a pronounced limp. Left behind, emasculated and overwhelmed with guilt, he turns away from his romantic pursuit of Nora Lee to devote himself to political theory. Writing up plans for an international super-parliament with the help of Nora’s cousin Loveday, Gordon dreams of presenting his ideas to the British government. This edition of Marie Stopes’ Conquest: Or, A Piece of Jade is a classic of British scientific literature reimagined for modern readers.

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Marie Stopes (1880-1958) was a British author, activist, eugenicist, and paleobotanist. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Stopes was the daughter of Henry Stopes, a paleontologist, and Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, a women’s rights activist and Shakespearean scholar. Raised in London, she attended meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from a young age, eventually enrolling at University College London to study botany and geology. In 1902, the year of her graduation, she began working with Dr. Francis Oliver as a research assistant. After participating in a groundbreaking discovery of fossil specimens containing intact fern fronds and seeds, Stopes completed her D. Sc., making her the youngest Briton in history to attain the degree. Her own research focused on Carboniferous coal balls from throughout different geological eras, but she eventually turned away from paleobotany to focus on the issue of birth control. In 1913, after meeting Margaret Sanger, and spurred on by her impending divorce, Stopes published Married Love or Love in Marriage, a guide for couples intended to promote birth control and foster healthy sexual relationships. Working with husband Humphrey Roe, Stopes founded the first birth control clinic in Britain in 1921, offering free services for married women in need of contraceptives and sexual education. Like many of her contemporaries, Stopes opposed abortion and was an ardent supporter of eugenics, even entrusting her clinic to the Eugenics Society after her death from breast cancer at the age of 77.