[Rarebooks] FS: Jane Addams: TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE, Inscribed First Edition

[Charles Agvent]

 From our Fall Catalog of 60 New Arrivals now posted on our website: 
http://www.charlesagvent.com. It contains a fine miscellany, most of 
this caliber, in a variety of fields including Literature, Presidential, 
Hand-colored Plates, Autograph Letters, Early Printing, Americana, etc.

ADDAMS, Jane. TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE. WITH AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1910. First Edition. Brown cloth, 
pictorially illustrated in several colors, stamped in gilt. Illustrated 
with photographs and drawings by Norah Hamilton. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by 
the author on the front endpaper: "To dear Mrs. Faber/for her 
godchild/Jane Addams." One of the great books of American letters by a 
unique figure in American social thought and history. Housed in a cloth 
chemise and a specially made cloth slipcase with a gilt-lettered morocco 
spine label.

  Magazine clipping pasted to front pastedown and two small newspaper 
clippings-including a photograph of Addams- affixed to the front 
endpaper. Front hinge neatly repaired; rear hinge with paper split, but 
both covers tight. Bright copy, Very Good or better.     $1,000.00	

Jane Addams (1860-1935), American settlement house founder and social 
reformer, was born to a well-off family in Cedarsville, Illinois. Though 
she had hoped for a degree from Smith College, her father insisted she 
attend the Rockford Female Seminary. After graduation, she attended the 
Women's Medical College in Philadelphia but withdrew due to a chronic 
spinal illness. After a successful convalescence, she toured Europe in 
1883 and 1887 where she was deeply affected by her experiences with the 
urban poor causing her to undertake a thorough study of the living 
conditions of the working poor. She vowed to create an American version 
of the settlement houses she had visited. In 1889, together with 
lifelong friend Helen Starr, she launched Hull House, a sanctuary 
offering physical, financial, medical, and legal protection to Chicago's 
urban underclass. By 1893 Addams had opened or inspired 40 other such 
local clubs, including nurseries, dispensaries and boarding houses, all 
based at Hull House and devoted to providing higher standards of care 
than had ever been offered to America's poor, predominantly female at 
this time. By the late 1890s Addams no longer had to self-fund her 
endeavors, but could depend on assistance from wealthy Chicago women. 
With such backing, Addams, along with Alice Hamilton, Julia Lathrop, and 
Edith and Grace Abbot, among others, effected not just change in their 
local community, but lobbied for legislative intervention. Due in large 
part to their efforts, Illinois passed its first factory inspection act 
in 1893 and Chicago established the first juvenile court in the United 
States in 1899; in addition, the succeeding years saw Hull House 
influence in political battles for child labor laws, limitation on 
working hours for women, improvement in welfare procedures, recognition 
of labor unions, protection of immigrants, compulsory school attendance, 
and industrial safety. Addams's battles occasioned opposition from 
conservative quarters, and her voluble opposition to the Great War won 
her no friends, but her local infamy was ultimately overwhelmed by her 
international reputation for pioneering good works.

Addams's local community work led her into political activism on a 
national and even global scale: in 1909 she became the first female 
President of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections; in 
1911, the first head of the National Federation of Settlements and 
Vice-President of the National American Women Suffrage Alliance 
(1922-14); and in 1912, a vocal member of the Roosevelt for President 
campaign. In 1915 Addams became Chairman of the Woman's Peace Party and 
President of the first Women's Peace Congress at the Hague; in 1919 she 
presided over the second Women's Peace Conference in Zurich, and 
remained its president until her death; and in 1920 she became a 
founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union. During the 
following decade she pursued many of these causes with vigor and a 
degree of success. In 1931 Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 
her work in forming the first Women's Peace Party, along with Nicholas 
Murray Butler.

Today the most widely-read of her copious publications are her two 
memoirs, TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE, published in 1910 and her most 
successful book then as it is now; and its less optimistic sequel, THE 
SECOND TWENTY YEARS AT HULL HOUSE, published in 1930.

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