Boston Women's Health Book Collective
Women and Their Bodies: A Course, 1970
Boston: New England Free Press
First edition, preceding the commercial publication.
2576
Small quarto. 1-87, 89-193pp (complete, erratum at bottom of p. 87 states, 'Page 88 is NOT missing - I just goofed in the numbering). Photographs, diagrams, and tables scattered throughout...
Small quarto. 1-87, 89-193pp (complete, erratum at bottom of p. 87 states, "Page 88 is NOT missing - I just goofed in the numbering). Photographs, diagrams, and tables scattered throughout visualize the many strands of women's health information gathered here. A now-canonical text of second-wave feminism, the present copy presents the mimeographed, highly practical beginnings of what would later be published as Our Bodies, Ourselves. Its frank discussion of women's health and sexuality includes such topics as reproductive rights and abortion, pregnancy and post-partum care, menopause, sexually-transmitted diseases, and sexual pleasure. The Health Workshop began in the spring of 1969 under the direction of Nancy Miriam Hawley; the book grew out of the workshop attendees' recognition of the severe lack of medical and sexual resources available to women. Singly or in pairs, the workshop members took it upon themselves to write the various section of the booklet, which they then mimeographed and distributed as a pedagogical tool. A reported 250,000 copies were quickly reproduced and circulated before the text's commercial reprinting. Bound in self wrappers, staple-bound and backed in cloth tape. Light rubs along edges and fair toning, as expected, else a comparatively near fine copy.


