The Feminine Mystique

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1963. First U.K. Edition. First Impression. Octavo (22.25cm); red paper-covered boards, with titles stamped in gilt on spine; dustjacket; [7],8-410,[6]pp. Base of spine gently nudged, with a touch of sunning to spine ends, else a fresh, Near Fine copy. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced 25/- net), gently spine-sunned, showing modest shelfwear, a few tiny nicks and small tears, and a faint scuff at mid-spine; Very Good+. An attractive copy of this cornerstone work by Friedan (1921-2006), a book widely credited for launching second wave feminism in the United States. Friedan discusses "the problem that has no name" - a widespread sense of dissatisfaction among women in the U.S. during the 1950s and 60s. Sensing this unhappiness in her own life prompted her to compile an extensive questionnaire, which she used to survey her classmates from Smith College 15 years after graduation. "The answers given by 200 women to those intimate open-ended questions made me realize that what was wrong could not be related to education in the way it was then believed to be. The problems and satisfaction of their lives, and mine, and the way our education contributed to them, simply did not fit the image of the modern American woman as she was written about in women's magazines, studied and analyzed in classrooms and clinics, praised and damned in a ceaseless barrage of words ever since the end of World War II. There was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform, the image that I came to call the feminine mystique" (p.9). The book sold more than a million copies within the first year of publication, and has since been noted by the U.S. Department of Labor as one of the "Books that Shaped Work in America." The first printing of the American edition was a modest 3,000 copies; while the size of the UK edition is unknown, it must have been produced in considerably smaller numbers, given the comparatively few copies we've seen over the years.