Whiteway.

First edition, first impression, in notably attractive condition, of this work by one of Whiteway's founding members Nellie Shaw, "an anarchist-feminist seamstress from Penge" (Butler & Bundy, p. 25). Whiteway was a Tolstoyan anarchist community established near the Gloucestershire village of Miserden in 1898 based on the principles of equality between sexes and individuals.

It was conceived as an experiment in practical communism and the original members were strongly influenced by the teachings of Tolstoy with which they had become acquainted through the Croyden Brotherhood Church. The colony, however, attracted a diversity of people as no single religious, philosophical, or political creed was prescribed and over the years the lifestyle of many colonists evolved away from early principles. "Vegetarianism was obligatory, nudism optional An early visitor remarked that prosperity sapped some of the primitive rigour from the venture. However, the sexual permissiveness that had been one of the founding tenets remained In the 1920s the Colony was infiltrated by the Home Office, anxious about revolutionary tendencies" (Aslet, Villages of Britain, online).