The Cause.
A short history of the women's movement in Great Britain.
London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd, 1928 Stock Code: 139283
Inscribed from the author and Agnes Garrett
First edition, first impression, a scarce presentation copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper "To Edith Badcock with love from Agnes & Ray Christmas 1928". "Agnes" is Strachey's close friend and fellow suffrage campaigner Agnes Garrett (1845-1935), older sister of Millicent Garrett Fawcett, to whom the book is dedicated.Agnes also had a hand in presenting copies of Strachey's later biography of Millicent (1931), a small number of which are known to have had labels reading "Presented by Miss Agnes Garrett in memory of her sister Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett" (in a few cases the printer of said labels misidentifying their relationship as daughter-mother). Copies of either work personally inscribed thus are genuinely uncommon; we cannot trace another in recent commercial history. We have been unable to identify the recipient, but that they were well enough known to Agnes and Ray to receive an inscribed Christmas present in the year of publication seems clear.
The Cause was Strachey's "best-known and most successful book" (ODNB) and was for many decades regarded as the classic account of the English women's movement. "While acknowledging in a limited way the importance of the militants, it established a version of the suffrage movement that endorsed the views and celebrated the role of Millicent Fawcett and the NUWSS" (ODNB).
Description
Octavo. Original reddish-brown cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, frame blocked in blind to front board, bottom edge untrimmed.
Illustrations
Frontispiece portrait of Millicent Garrett Fawcett and 15 photographic plates. Included as Appendix I is "Cassandra," a previously unpublished essay on the position of women in society by Florence Nightingale.
Condition
Spine faded and ends lightly bruised, a few faint marks to boards, book block edges and contents foxed; a very good copy, the binding tight and square, contents clean, the plates particularly so.
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