STOPES, Marie. Contraception (Birth Control): Its Theory, History and Practice. London: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1931.
8vo. Original terracotta cloth, lettered in gilt to spine and front board, with original and unclipped dust wrapper; pp. [xxviii], 487, [1], with 10 plates; spine sunned, extremities a little worn with one small tear to foot of spine; dust wrapper lightly toned with minor loss to upper corner of front panel and to head of spine (touching a few letters), light spotting to text block; some toning to outer margin of p. [i], occasional light spotting, especially at end, otherwise a very good copy; authorial inscription to ffep (see below), “1931” in pencil to upper corner of front panel of wrapper.
Third edition, “New and Enlarged”, intimately inscribed by Stopes to the front free endpaper: “To a Proof-Reader with the gratitude of the author, Marie C. Stopes 9 July 31”.
Marie Stopes’s most influential works, Contraception was instrumental in bringing the practical and technical aspects of contraception into public discussion.
Given its provenance, it is highly likely that this copy belonged to Humphrey Verdon Roe, Stopes’s second husband, who played a key role in financing her groundbreaking publication Married Love.
Renowned for her pioneering contributions to sex education, Stopes – together with Verdon Roe – founded Britain’s first birth control clinic in 1921, located in Holloway, North London.
Provenance: From the estate of Harry Verdon Stopes-Roe (Marie Stopes’s son) and his wife, Mary Stopes-Roe (née Wallis), daughter of the engineer and scientist Sir Barnes Neville Wallis.
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