Birth Control and Other Writings

Marie Stopes (1880-1958) is primarily remembered as a pioneering propagandist for birth control, but her concern for contraception was deeply rooted in her conceptions of ideal motherhood and marriage. A concern with the issues with which she was identified in the late 1920s can be ssen in early works such as "The Race", while "Marriage in My Time" indicates her involvement with a range of feminist campaigns aimed at ameliorating women's lot in marriage even before the grant of suffrage in 1918 (for which se campained). The flood of queries which she received from correspondents in the wake of the publicaiton of "Married Love" (1918) made her aware of the lack of help available from the medical profession in many routine events of the life cycle, and of the desperate need for accessible books on topics such as sex eduction and venereal disease. Prior to taking up the banner of sex and marriage reform Stopes had been successful scientist, the first British woman to obtain the Ph.D. in botany and one of the first women to be appointed to a university lectureship in a science subject.
She received funding from the Royal Society for an expedition to Japan to investigate living plant fossils, and the trip described in "A Journal from Japan" became the foundation of a life-long interest in Japanese life and culture. Taken together the works published here illustrate the diversity ofher writings and demonstrate her ability to frame her arguments towards specific audiences, from the over-burdened working-class mothers addressed in "A letter to Working Mothers" to the medical professionals who were the target of "Contraception". The set should appeal to anyone interested in this 20th-century icon whose influence and legacy is still widely apparent.