MARRIAGE AND MORALS

First edition, first printing. Publisher's original navy cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in dustwrapper. Top edge blue. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth a touch faded to the spine and extreme top edge, with just a little rubbing to the extremities. The blue top-stain is somewhat faded, and there is some spotting to the toned closed text block edge. The contents, with light spotting to the endpapers and prelims and the occasional small foxing spot throughout, are otherwise clean and without inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the rubbed creased and darkened dustwrapper, that has a few small chips to the spine tips and corners and a couple of short closed tears to the lower spine folds. Not price-clipped (7s 6d net to the lower front flap). Uncommon in dustwrapper.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) presents here a definitive argument against Victorian moralities regarding sex and marriage, suggesting a modernised version of Western society that allowed for greater emancipation of women, wider availability of contraception, and easier access to divorce. Russell's opinions on sexual morality provoked backlash in the United States upon the book's publication and continued to be protested decades later, to the extent that his professorship appointment at the City College of New York in 1940 was annulled by a court judgement declaring him "morally unfit" to teach. The court decision was condemned by many intellectuals, including Albert Einstein, who opined in his open letter in support of Russell that "great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds". The author would go on to receive the 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature for his body of work, though it was later revealed in his autobiography (1951-69) that he considered the Prize to have been awarded for 'Marriage and Morals' alone.