Counsel to Parents on The Moral Education of Their Children in Relation to Sex.
Inscribed
Blackwell, Elizabeth. Counsel to Parents on The Moral Education of Their Children in Relation to Sex. London: Hatchards, 1880.
8vo; iv; 128pp; original decorated brown cloth with author and title in gold on front cover; moderately rubbed at top and bottom of spine; else very good. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
Third Edition, revised. A presentation copy, inscribed in Blackwell’s hand: Mr. Percival Chubb, With the author’s kind regards. The first edition of this controversial book was published in 1878. RLIN cites only one copy of the first edition, and that is in the Library of Congress, inscribed by Blackwell to Lucy Stone, which came with the NAWSA archives. There are no copies of this edition or the second edition cited in RLIN/OCLC, although there are three copies of the 1881 (Fourth) edition, one copy of the 1882 (Sixth), and two copies of the 1884 edition. It appears that any copy published within the first ten years of publication is one of the greatest rarity.
Percival Chubb (1860-1960), an important English ethicist to whom Blackwell gave and inscribed this book, wanted to change the intolerable working condition of the Industrial Revolution. In 1883, he founded “The Followship of the New Life,” an intellectual discussion and study group to develop models for alternative societies. He was also a member of the Fabian Society, with George Bernard Shaw and others. About this time he discovered the Ethical Culture Movement, and in 1889 sailed for New York, taking a position with the New York Ethical Culture School. During 1911 to 1933, he was Leader of the St. Louis Ethical Culture Society. Under his leadership the society formed a Women’s Auxiliary, which, through community outreach, became its most charitable group. Chubb believed the primary purpose of religion was to bring people together. With a talent for the dramatic arts, he introduced a cycle of festivals, rites, and seasons common to all cultures.
Because of its controversial and progressive subject matter, the book offered here, Counsel to Parents, had first to be privately printed in 1878. It refutes the popular notion that the double standard of morality is rooted in physiological necessity, and urges an end to prostitution. Blackwell states that chastity and sexual restraint can only be achieved by early sex education, and she links moral reform with the woman’s cause, arguing that winning the battle against licentiousness was crucial for the emancipation of women.
American Women’s History, by Doris Weatherford, pp. 39-40.
The Book of Women’s Firsts, by Phyllis Read and Bernard Witlieb, New York: Random House, 1992, pp. 54-55.
NAW I, pp. 161-65.
The Slavery of Sex, by Blanche Hersh, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1978, p. 171.
Timelines, pp. 145, 221, 222, 258.
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