The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928 [Paperback]

Margaret Sanger (Author), Esther Katz (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 2007

The birth control crusader, feminist, and reformer Margaret Sanger was one of the most controversial and compelling figures in the twentieth century. The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1 is composed of Sanger’s letters, diaries, journals, articles, and speeches, most of which have not appeared previously in print. Now in paperback, the book documents the critical phases and influences of an American feminist icon and offers rare glimpses into her working-class childhood, burgeoning feminism, spiritual and scientific interests, sexual explorations, and diverse roles as wife, mother, lover, nurse, journalist, radical socialist, and activist.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Mesmerizing letters from the days when birth control was legally obscene and jail sentences were regularly given out for talking about it in public. Nearly a century ago, Margaret Sanger was defending woman's 'ownership of her own body' and linking access to contraception to civil liberties and personal freedom. Rights we take for granted have a long and sometimes surprising history that comes clear on these pages. Required reading for our own time, whichever side of Roe v. Wade you are on."
-- Linda K. Kerber, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship

"These wonderful letters, diary excerpts, and essays dramatize women's long struggle for respect, self-awareness, independence, influence, and control over our bodies and our lives. To contemplate Margaret Sanger's harsh reality and the enduring vision of this courageous pioneer--while the war against women escalates on every front--is a heartening and galvanizing act of rebellion. Esther Katz and her splendid team have given us all a very great gift."
-- Blanche Wiesen Cook, University Distinguished Professor, John Jay College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and the author of Eleanor Roosevelt, volumes 1 and 2

"This engrossing volume, meticulously edited and selected, captures Margaret Sanger in all her complexity during a formative period in her long career. Open to practically any page, and something will grab your historical attention."
-- Susan Ware, editor of Notable American Women, volume 5

"[Katz et al.] have done their editing with scrupulous care, they have annotated the documents they reproduce with monk-like dispassion. . . . Sanger is a thoroughly fascinating figure, and the book makes for compulsive reading."
--David Tell, The Weekly Standard

"The work of Katz and her team is critical for a fuller understanding of first-wave feminism, family planning, and one of the century's most interesting women."
-- Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering

“Birth control was understood to be a tool of working-class liberation that would stall the capitalist engine and improve wages by limiting the supply of future workers. How the birth control movement (and, it could be argued the Left in general) began with such radical, expansive politics, and devolved into a struggle for the much narrower goal of individual privacy, is just one of the fascinating stories that will develop across this four-volume set of Margaret Sanger’s papers. . . . Every document is scrupulously annotated to identify unfamiliar people, places, events, and terminology. . . . An absorbing volume that provides an excellent introduction to Sanger’s life and work for the novice as well as an edifying source for the serious researcher.”
-- Social Service Review

“Because Sanger knew everyone in the world associated directly with sexual reform or research and, for a time, was very active in radical politics, her range of correspondents was enormous, from sexologists such as Havelock Ellis, to birth control pioneers such as Mary Stopes, to the communist Emma Goldman, the labor organizer Big Bill Haywood, the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr., and writers and intellectuals such as H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. . . . [The project] is scholarship at its highest level and when complete will be a standard work of reference for anyone interested in the development of birth control or the history of sex education not only in the United States but also in the rest of the world. It will also record the life of one of the most influential women of the twentieth century.”
-- Archives of Sexual Behavior

“This collection is a welcome addition to Sanger scholarship. It allows readers to explore all aspects of her complex life and ideas. Readers might find her admirable and inspiring, then turn the page and find her maddening, arrogant, or irresponsible. Introductions to each section add context; readers can provide their own interpretations. The collection offers a wonderful window into Sanger and the early-20th-century U.S.”
-- CHOICE

Book Description

The birth control crusader, feminist, and reformer Margaret Sanger was one of the most controversial and compelling figures in the twentieth century. The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1 is composed of Sanger’s letters, diaries, journals, articles, and speeches, most of which have not appeared previously in print. Now in paperback, the book documents the critical phases and influences of an American feminist icon and offers rare glimpses into her working-class childhood, burgeoning feminism, spiritual and scientific interests, sexual explorations, and diverse roles as wife, mother, lover, nurse, journalist, radical socialist, and activist.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (January 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252074602
• ISBN-13: 978-0252074608
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #385,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #64 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Women's Studies > Abortion & Birth Control

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A heartfelt thank you., October 18, 2010

By 

Eckie Friar "eckief" (Danville, PA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928 (Paperback)

This is a brilliant collection of Margaret Sanger's personal letters, diary entries, and the pamphlets and tracts that she wrote during the younger part of her adult years. It is a truly inspiring look at one woman's strength and courage as she faced down religious tradition, the law, and public opinion in her stand for women to govern their own bodies. She not only describes the poverty, the meanness, and the ignorance of her day, in chilling and able detail, but devotes her life to correcting what she sees wrong while inspiring others to do the same. I am so thankful for the hard work and dedication that went in to this magnificent work.

7 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From the Publisher, December 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928 (Hardcover)

This long-awaited collection of letters, diaries, articles and speeches, most of them never before published, were selected with an eye to telling the story of a remarkable life--a life consumed with the quest for women's sexual liberation. The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger (Volume 1) gives us, with dramatic immediacy, the first 28 years of Margaret Sanger's quest.

The birth control crusader, feminist, and reformer Margaret Sanger was one of the most controversial and compelling figures in the twentieth century. This first volume of The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger documents the critical phases and influences of an American feminist icon and offers rare glimpses into her working-class childhood, burgeoning feminism, spiritual and scientific interests, sexual explorations, and diverse roles as wife, mother, nurse, journalist, radical socialist, and activist.

These letters and other writings, including diaries, journals, articles, and speeches, most of which have never before been published, have been selected and assembled with an eye to telling the story of a remarkable life, punctuated by arrests and imprisonments, exile, love affairs, and a momentous personal loss--a life consumed with the quest for women's sexual liberation. Because its narrative line is so absorbing, volume 1 may be read as a powerful biography.

Volume 1 covers a twenty-eight-year period from nurse's training and early socialist involvement in pre- World War I bohemian Greenwich Village to Sanger's adoption of birth control (a term she helped coin in 1914) as a fundamental tenet of women's rights. It traces the intersection of her life and work with other reformers, activists and leaders of modernity on both sides of the Atlantic, including Havelock Ellis, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Emma Goldman, Max Eastman, and Eugene Debs, as well as many leading radical artists and writers of the day. It highlights her legislative and organizational efforts, her support of the eugenics movement, and the alliances she secured with medical professionals in her crusade to make birth control legal, respectable, and accessible. This volume also includes letters from women desperately in need of fertility control who saw Sanger as their last hope. Supplemented by an introduction, brief essays providing narrative and chronological links, and substantial notes, the volume is an invaluable tool for understanding Sanger's actions and accomplishments.

The documents assembled here, more than 80 percent of them letters, were culled from the Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm Edition, edited by Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo, and Peter C. Engelman. Two subsequent volumes will address later periods in her life, and an additional volume will cover her international work in the birth control struggle.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Papers that make a powerful biography, December 3, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928 (Hardcover)

This long-awaited collection of letters, diaries, articles and speeches, most of them never before published, were selected with an eye to telling the story of a remarkable life--a life consumed with the quest for women's sexual liberation. The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger (Volume 1) gives us, with dramatic immediacy, the first 28 years of Margaret Sanger's quest.

FROM THE JACKET
The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger
Vol. 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928
Edited by Esther Katz
Cathy Moran Hajo and Peter C. Engelman, Assistant Editors

The birth control crusader, feminist, and reformer Margaret Sanger was one of the most controversial and compelling figures in the twentieth century. This first volume of The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger documents the critical phases and influences of an American feminist icon and offers rare glimpses into her working-class childhood, burgeoning feminism, spiritual and scientific interests, sexual explorations, and diverse roles as wife, mother, nurse, journalist, radical socialist, and activist.

These letters and other writings, including diaries, journals, articles, and speeches, most of which have never before been published, have been selected and assembled with an eye to telling the story of a remarkable life, punctuated by arrests and imprisonments, exile, love affairs, and a momentous personal loss--a life consumed with the quest for women's sexual liberation. Because its narrative line is so absorbing, volume 1 may be read as a powerful biography.

Volume 1 covers a twenty-eight-year period from her nurse's training and early socialist involvement in pre- World War I bohemian Greenwich Village to her adoption of birth control (a term she helped coin in 1914) as a fundamental tenet of women's rights. It traces the intersection of her life and work with other reformers, activists and leaders of modernity on both sides of the Atlantic, including Havelock Ellis, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Emma Goldman, Max Eastman, and Eugene Debs, as well as many leading radical artists and writers of the day. It highlights her legislative and organizational efforts, her support of the eugenics movement, and the alliances she secured with medical professionals in her crusade to make birth control legal, respectable, and accessible. This volume also includes letters from women desperately in need of fertility control who saw Sanger as their last hope. Supplemented by an introduction, brief essays providing narrative and chronological links, and substantial notes, the volume is an invaluable tool for understanding Sanger's actions and accomplishments.

The documents assembled here, more than 80 percent of them letters, were culled from the Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm Edition, edited by Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo, and Peter C. Engelman. Two subsequent volumes will address later periods in her life, and an additional volume will cover her international work in the birth control struggle.

"Mesmerizing letters from the days when birth control was legally obscene and jail sentences were regularly given out for talking about it in public. Nearly a century ago, Margaret Sanger was defending woman's 'ownership of her own body' and linking access to contraception to civil liberties and personal freedom. Rights we take for granted have a long and sometimes surprising history that comes clear on these pages. Required reading for our own time, whichever side of Roe v. Wade you are on."
-- Linda K. Kerber, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship

"These wonderful letters, diary excerpts, and essays dramatize women's long struggle for respect, self-awareness, independence, influence, and control over our bodies and our lives. To contemplate Margaret Sanger's harsh reality and the enduring vision of this courageous pioneer--while the war against women escalates on every front--is a heartening and galvanizing act of rebellion. Esther Katz and her splendid team have given us all a very great gift."
-- Blanche Wiesen Cook, University Distinguished Professor, John Jay College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and the author of Eleanor Roosevelt, volumes 1 and 2

"This engrossing volume, meticulously edited and selected, captures Margaret Sanger in all her complexity during a formative period in her long career. Open to practically any page, and something will grab your historical attention."
-- Susan Ware, editor of Notable American Women, volume 5