The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. London: Constable & Co., 1928. First Edition. Pp xxxvi, 494. Publisher’s pale green cloth boards, with elaborated design in green & gold.  A fine bright copy, housed in quarter morocco solander box.

Presentation copy, Inscribed by Shaw on the half-title page. “To Ethel Snowden, from Bernard Shaw.”

With Ethel Snowden’s bookplate laid down to the front pastedown and also including a loosely inserted vintage signed sepia postcard photograph of Philip Snowden. Publisher’s loosely inserted printed slip, the text stating ‘Please consider this book private until the 1st of June, the day of publication. G.B.S.’

Ethel Snowden (1881-1951) Viscountess Snowden was a British socialist, human rights activist and feminist politician. Wife of Philip Snowden (1864-1937) 1st Viscount Snowden (who served as Labour’s first Chancellor of the Exchequer).

Begun in 1924, the year of the British Labour Party’s first period of office under Ramsay MacDonald (who hailed it as the world’s most important book since the Bible) and first published in 1928, ‘The Intelligent Woman’s Guide’ draws on Shaw’s decades of activism and remains a brilliant, thought-provoking classic of political propaganda.

” He was a Tolstoy with jokes, a modern Dr. Johnson, a universal genius who on his own modest reckoning put even Shakespeare in the shade.” The Independent.