A Curious "Gesture"
STOPES, Marie. Prevention of Venereal Disease. London: Putnam & Co. 1939.
8vo. Original aubergine paper-covered boards, printed in white and green, cased within a glassine dust wrapper; pp. xi, [3], 62; extremities very lightly rubbed, text block lightly spotted; a few occasional small stains, otherwise very good; authorial inscription to ffep (see below); publisher’s price label to front pastedown.
Third edition, eleventh impression, “thoroughly revised and enlarged”, and inscribed by Marie Stopes to front free endpaper: “A Gesture 20. Nov. 1939 from the author to H. M.C.S”.
The recipient of the book, Humphrey Verdon Roe – Stopes’s second husband – played a pivotal role in launching her career as a sexologist by financing the publication of Married Love in 1918, a work initially deemed too controversial for its groundbreaking views on reproductive health.
By the time Prevention of Venereal Disease appeared, Stopes and Verdon Roe were estranged. The inscription’s reference to a “gesture” is therefore intriguing and remains open to interpretation.
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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