[Rarebooks] FS: HUMAN WORK by Charlotte Perkins Gilman with a scarce INSCRIPTION to the Governor of Colorado

[Charles Agvent]

 From our new catalog containing 45 items related to WOMEN AND THEIR 
QUEST FOR EQUAL RIGHTS, recently posted on our website: 
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GILMAN, Charlotte Perkins. HUMAN WORK Inscribed to the Governor of 
Colorado. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1904. First Edition. 
INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the front endpaper: "To a friend 
of mine and/of progress, Alva Adams,/with good will of the 
author/Charlotte Perkins Gilman/1905." In a similar hand (unsigned) but 
probably not Gilman's on the rear endpaper is written: "Work - labor - 
something to do is/the only wealth as it is the/only specific for 
contentment." Perkins, a feminist writer and grand-niece of Harriet 
Beecher Stowe, is perhaps best known for her semi-autobiographical short 
story "The Yellow Wallpaper" which she wrote after a severe bout of 
postpartum psychosis and which is considered an important early work of 
American feminist literature. Gilman believed economic independence was 
the only thing that could bring true freedom for women and make them 
equal to men, arguing that motherhood should not preclude a woman from 
working outside the home: "A house does not need a wife any more than it 
needs a husband.... There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ 
of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver." Adams's small bookplate 
on the front pastedown. Books signed by this important figure in the 
feminist movement are very scarce. Library stamps from a Colorado 
university on the front and rear pastedowns and endpapers, all edges of 
the bulked text, and the copyright page; the cloth clean, unmarked, and 
bright. But for the library markings a Near Fine copy, lacking a 
dustwrapper if there was one.

Alva Adams served as the fifth, tenth, and fourteenth Governor of 
Colorado from 1887 to 1889, 1897 to 1899, and briefly in 1905. During 
his first administration Adams took a controversial pro-labor stand and 
was influential in passing bills establishing the Bureau of Labor 
Statistics and making it illegal to use children under the age of 
fourteen for labor. He also opposed capital punishment and personally 
sponsored a bill ending public executions, playing an integral part in 
ending corporal punishment practices at State institutions. During his 
second term Adams became the first Colorado Governor called upon to 
mobilize and lead the state during a national war after President 
McKinley declared war with Spain. Adams had to raise private funds to 
finance the troops, going so far as to purchase personally each 
soldier's identification tags. He was named governor for a third time in 
1904, but due to the flagrant fraud from both parties during the 
election, he was removed from office when the legislature came into 
session in 1905. His son served in the United States Senate. 
(#016105)        $2,000.00


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