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100 MEAD, Margaret. Growing Up in New Guinea. London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd, 1931 Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine in black. With the pictorial dust jacket. With 24 plates. Gently bumped spine ends. A very good copy in the scarce dust jacket with shallow chips to spine ends. first uk edition, rare in the dust jacket, especially in such nice condition, and with an interesting female provenance, from the library of Letitia Fairfield, the first female Chief Medical Of- ficer for London and a pioneer of women’s and children’s health, with her signature to the front free endpaper. “At the outbreak of war in 1914 Fairfield was one of a group of women doctors who offered their services to the War Office, only to be told that the war could be won without them” ( ODNB ). Undeterred, Fairfield (1885–1978) became first a medical officer to the new Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and then the chief medical officer to the new Women’s Royal Air Force, before being created CBE in recogni- tion of her war service in 1919. Her medical expertise was actively sought by the War Office in 1940, after which she was appointed the senior woman doctor (with the now fully commissioned rank of lieutenant-colonel) and assistant director-general for medical services. “As a medical student and young doctor she threw herself wholeheartedly into the campaign for women’s suffrage, including addressing many public meetings . . . [and] she joined the militant suffragette Women’s Social and Political Union for a time but soon became critical of Christabel Pankhurst’s authoritarianism” (ibid.). First published in the US the previous year, this is Mead’s landmark second book, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) being the first. £300 [120674] 101 MORRISON, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970 Octavo. Original blue cloth-backed grey boards, titles to spine in silver. With the dust jacket. Spine very gently faded with a touch of shelfwear, a near-fine copy with a small patch of professional repair to rear free endpaper. In the
jacket with closed tear to head of rear panel, tape repair to verso, tips and spine ends slightly chipped and rubbed, a little creasing to extremities. first edition of morrison’s highly influential debut novel. Morrison wrote The Bluest Eye while working as a senior fic- tion editor at Random House, waking at four each morning to write before work. £850 [127543] 102 (MOUNTAINEERING.) The Pinnacle Club Journal. No. 1[–15]. [No place:] published by the Pinnacle Club, 1924–73 15 volumes, octavo. Original printed card wrappers, first two vols. buff, the remaining pale blue. Nos. 1–11 with a consistent illustrated front cover de- sign, nos. 12, 13, 15 plain, no. 14, the Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, with a graphic front cover designed by Frances Tanner. Extensively illustrated with black and white photographic plates, smaller photographic reproductions to the text. No. 15 with a photocopied letter from the Club Librarian, Jo Full- er, laid in, requesting that members return missing books. Misprint to spine and front cover of no. 7 identifying it as “No. 6”, this corrected in pencil on the front. All in very good condition. first editions, a scarce mountaineering set; a continuous run of the first 15 journals published by one of the earliest British wom- en-only climbing clubs , with contributions from leading female climbers such as Eleanor Winthrop Young, Dorothy Pilley, Nea Morin, and Dorothea Gravina. Copac locates continuous runs at just seven institutions, and incomplete sets at Aberdeen and Trinity College Dublin; OCLC locates none outside the UK. At a time when women were excluded from most climbing clubs, avid climber Emily “Pat” Kelly founded the Pinnacle Club in 1921 to represent women who felt otherwise discontent at their relative lack of executive power and representation within the Fell & Rock Climbing Club, established in 1906 and open to both genders. Kelly “felt that in this, as in all other things, woman must work out her own salvation, and that there would be no real development for her in the art of climbing rocks until she did. Kindness and help from men climbers are not sufficient” (No. 1, p. 2). In particular the club aimed to develop a more professional attitude to difficult moun-
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