Pivot of Civilization, The.
Presentation Issue
Sanger, Margaret. The Pivot of Civilization. New York: Brentano’s, (1922).
8vo.; partially unopened; fore-edge untrimmed; fore-edge foxed; red cloth, stamped in gilt; rubbed.
First edition of the first book Sanger published after founding the American Birth Control League in 1921; with an introduction by H.G. Wells; dedicated to Alice Drysdale Vickery, “Whose prophetic vision of liberated womanhood has been an inspiration.” Chapters include: “A New Truth Emerges,” “Conscripted Motherhood,” “ ‘Children Troop Down from Heaven’,” “The Fertility of the Feeble-Minded,” “The Cruelty of Charity,” “Neglected Factors of the World Problem,” “Is Revolution the Remedy?.” “Dangers of Cradle Competition,” “A Moral Necessity,” “Science the Ally,” “Education and Expression,” and “Woman and the Future.” Sanger includes as an appendix the Principles and Aims of the American Birth Control League.
A presentation copy, inscribed on the front endpaper: New York/ Oct 16-1922/ To/ Mrs [sic] Parrish/ With regards/ Margaret Sanger. Apparently a presentation issue: Of the numerous copies we’ve handled, this is the first in such good condition, untrimmed and unopened (two leaves every ten pages are unopened).
Sanger’s biographer Ellen Chesler writes that Havelock Ellis’s criticism of Woman and the New Race (1920) might well of have jumpstarted her composition of The Pivot of Civilization, in which Sanger “makes a more concerted effort to abandon dogmatism in favor of a dispassionate approach to the birth control question.” She writes that the volume also reflects
the clear influence of Wells, whom Margaret had met in the interim, and who lent her a great deal of both intellectual and commercial credibility by writing a flattering introduction. …Pivot presents a Wellsian world where a better life can be had for all without the necessity of violence and class warfare, because the great proletarian masses achieve self-direction and self-control by limiting their fertility voluntarily. …Margaret characterized her ideas as an extension of the principles of trade unionists, who were seeking to limit the number of workers in any given industry. …The Pivot of Civilization embodies more a change of emphasis than of message, an effort to move birth control toward the political center with respect to both class and gender politics. (Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, NY: Doubleday, 1992, p. 194).
(#4000)
Print Inquire
