First Year's Work by Mass Observation. 1937-38. With an Essay on a Nation-wide Intelligence Service by Bronislaw Malinowski.. This item is unavailable.First Year's Work by Mass Observation. 1937-38. With an Essay on a Nation-wide Intelligence Service by Bronislaw Malinowski.

Naomi Mitchison's copy of the first edition of the first annual report on the Mass-Observation project, her bookplate on the half-title. Mass-Observation aimed to record everyday life in Britain through the responses of around 500 ordinary citizens acting as "observers". Mitchison kept a detailed diary for the project. Mitchison (1897-1999) was a prolific Scottish author, publishing over 90 books of historical and science fiction, travel writing, and autobiography. She "used historical fiction to illuminate current social and political concerns debated by the intellectual left of her own time. Mitchison's great strength was to offer sensitive material to a wide audience under the guise of entertainment" (ODNB). The issues she explored most often in her fiction were contraception and free love, of which she was a passionate advocate. She was heavily involved in the campaign movement and helped to found one of the UK's first birth control units, the North Kensington Women's Welfare Centre, in 1924. Octavo. Original green printed wrappers. Wrappers foxed and toned, loss to head of spine sometime stabilized with glue, joints starting, contents clean: a good copy.…