Married Love

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Title Married Love
or
Love in Marriage
Author Marie Carmichael Stopes
Country U.S.
Language English
Publisher The Critic and Guide Company
Released 1918

Married Love or Love in Marriage is a book written by Dr. Marie Carmichael Stopes, first published in March 1918 by a small publisher, after many other larger publishers turned her down because of the content. It rapidly sold out, and was in its sixth printing within a fortnight.

The US Customs Service banned the book as obscene until April 6, 1931, when Judge John M. Woolsey overturned that decision. Woolsey is the same judge who in 1933 would lift the ban on James Joyce's "Ulysses", allowing for its publication and circulation in the United States of America.

It was the first book to note that women's sexual desire coincides with ovulation and the period right before menstruation. The book argued that marriage should be an equal relationship between partners, and other radical feminist notions of the time. Although officially scorned in the UK, the book went through 19 editions and sales of almost 750,000 copies by 1931.

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