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London: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1931. 8vo. Publisher's terracotta cloth, lettered in gilt to spine and front board, typographic dust-jacket with printed price of 15s to front flap; pp. xxvii, [1 (blank)], 487, [1 (blank)]; wear to jacket with sunning and loss to head (c. 10 x 5mm) of spine, pushing to spine ends with some damage to cloth at base, spine sunned, a little spotting to preliminaries and endpapers, some spotting and toning to edges of textblock; a very good copy; authorial inscription in ink to front free endpaper (see below).Third edition, revised and enlarged, this copy inscribed by Marie Stopes to her second husband, Humphrey Verdon Roe, co-founder with Stopes of the first British birth control clinic: 'To a Proof-Reader | with the gratitude of the | author, Marie C. Stopes | 9 July 31'.One of Stopes' most influential works, this book was instrumental in bringing practical and technical aspects of contraception into public discussion. In the 1920s, Stopes' name 'was not mentioned in the company of young ladies unless they were "advanced of thinking"' (Briant, p. 13), but as time went on, and her family planning clinic in London proved to be a success, people started to support access to birth control. Stopes established the first birth control clinic in the British Empire in 1921 with Humphrey Verdon Roe. By 1923, when Contraception was first published, she had treated more than ten thousand women, using these findings to form the basis of the research for her book. It is touching to encounter an association copy of Stopes' work in which the inscription captures the duality of Stopes and Roe's relationship. They were not only husband and wife, but also scientific collaborators. Read in retrospect, the inscription takes on an added significance in the context of their marriage, which, as the 1930s wore on, grew increasingly strained and ultimately estranged. Provenance: From the estate of Harry Verdon Stopes-Roe (1924-2014) philosopher and vice-president of the British Humanist Association, son of Marie Stopes and Humphrey Verdon Roe.See Briant, Marie Stopes: A Biography (1962).
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