Marie Stopes

"I am writing a book which will electrify England" Marie Stopes told a friend, "a book about the plain facts of marriage." "Married Love" was published in 1918, sold over a million copies and was translated into 13 languages. Yet its 37-year-old author, a lecturer in fossil plants, was, she insisted [...]
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"I am writing a book which will electrify England" Marie Stopes told a friend, "a book about the plain facts of marriage." "Married Love" was published in 1918, sold over a million copies and was translated into 13 languages. Yet its 37-year-old author, a lecturer in fossil plants, was, she insisted, still a virgin. Marie Stopes went on to open the first free birth control clinic in the British Empire and to win international fame for her work. But while admired by Bernard Shaw, the Duke of Windsor and much of her general public, her crusades aroused the violent opposition of the Roman Catholic Church and she became enmeshed in a series of sensational libel suits. Orderly and brilliant as a scientist, Marie Stopes' emotional life reigned chaotic. She followed a married Japanese professor to Japan, declared her Canadian husband impotent, and so exhausted her second husband that he consented, in writing, to allow her to take any lover she pleased. She remained bra-less and ardent until her late seventies.Drawing on family and personal letters and papers, a diary and Marie Stopes' unpublished novel, the biographer June Rose throws new light on the interweaving of the public and personal life of a fascinating and formidable woman.