Marie Stopes’ Sexual Revolution and the Birth Control Movement

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

   PDF

2. The Challenge of Marie Stopes

   • Clare Debenham

   Pages 1-17

3. Family Values

   • Clare Debenham

   Pages 19-33

4. Passionate About Palaeobotany

   • Clare Debenham

   Pages 35-58

5. From Married Love to Enduring Passion

   • Clare Debenham

   Pages 59-74

6. Birth Control: The Start of Marie Stopes’ Campaign

   • Clare Debenham

   Pages 75-85

7. The Growth of the Constructive Birth Control Clinics

   • Clare Debenham

   Pages 87-99

8. Marie and Her Correspondents

   • Clare Debenham

   Pages 101-107

9. Battles with Doctors, Clergy and Politicians

   • Clare Debenham

   Pages 109-119

10. Marie Stopes as a Maverick Eugenicist

    • Clare Debenham

    Pages 121-131

11. Epilogue

    • Clare Debenham

    Pages 133-141

12. Back Matter

    Pages 143-164

    PDF

This book examines the life, work and contraversial achievements of Marie Stopes, author and pioneer of the birth control movement in the interwar period. As the centenary of the ground-breaking publication of Married Love approaches, this study traces and reassesses Marie’s remarkable achievements, considering the literary, scientific and political themes of her life’s work. Clare Debenham analyses how Stope’s personal life led her to turn away from palaeobotany to concentrate on transforming the country’s sexual relationships by writing Married Love. Utilising extensive unpublished archive research, biographies, letters, and interviews with her friends and relatives, Debenham demonstrates that Stopes's work on sexual relationships has overshadowed her considerable achievements including her scientific career as a paleaobotantist, her literary success in the interwar period, and her work, with help from suffragists, in establishing the first British birth control clinic. 

• eugenics
• twentieth century
• family planning
• Married Love
• contraception
• feminism
• gender and sexuality

• University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

  Clare Debenham

Clare Debenham is Honorary Research Associate at the University of Manchester, UK. Since the 1970s she has been an active campaigner on women’s issues, and her previous publications include Birth Control and the Rights of Women: Post-Suffrage Feminism in the Twentieth Century (2014).

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