Looking Forward by Clara Codd (4 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Hardback in good condition- no jacket. Blue cloth board cover. Some fading and water marks to cover. Ex library copy with all the usual markings. Pages in good clean condition. Some foxing to front endpaper. Wear to edges of boards and spine ends.

Cloth Bound Boards. Condition: Good+. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. 1st Edition. 1918 first edition. Size 12mo, 7.5" tall, 71 pages. Blue cloth covered boards with darker and lighter blue titles in panel on the front cover and darker blue titles to the spine, title page and dedication printed in red and black, with the dust jacket. Book condition good plus, corners spine ends and hinges a little rubbed, offsetting from the jacket on the end-papers, otherwise the contents are very clean throughout. Dust jacket condition good, 2x2cm tear with loss to the upper outer corner of the front panel, small chip with loss to front lower outer corner, 60% of the spine has torn off and is lost, the title part has gone, the only bit left reads "Clara M. Co" large tear without loss diagonally across the front panel and another on the rear panel, dust darkened, not clipped though no price is stated. Clara Codd was a suffragette and theosophist. She was a member of the WSPU, and went to prison for a month for suffragette activity. She joined the Theosophical Society in 1903, and for decades lectured around the world for the society. The dust jacket features a vignette portrait from a photograph of Clara Codd.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Hardcover. Formerly belonging to the Theosophical Lending Library, Gloucester Place. Library stamps to end paper, copyright and title pages. Otherwise pages are clean and bright. Minor wear to top and bottom and edges of the spine. Light wear to boards. Very good condition.

First edition, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper: "With kindest greetings, Clara M. Codd". In Looking Forward, the suffragette and theosophist wrote optimistically about humanity's chances to create a new and improved social order following the destruction of the First World War: "We stand on the threshold of the dawn of a new life" (p. 44). Codd (1876-1971) was born to a middle-class family in Devon and spent her early twenties in Switzerland, where she worked as a governess, costume model, and musician. Throughout the 1900s, her egalitarian perspective and desire for positive change drove her to join the Theosophical Society, the Social Democratic Federation, and the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). In the early 1910s, she was offered work as a travelling lecturer by the Theosophical Society, beginning in India. Although Looking Forward acknowledges the destruction caused by the First World War, Codd believed that the industrial and commercial developments that it motivated, such as telegraph wires and steamships, "linked this round globe into one as never before" which would help to realize "humanity's essential unity". She also believed the war had taught people "the entire interdependence of individuals, classes, nations" which in turn would encourage them "to think in terms of common human need and happiness" (pp. 56-7). Octavo (191 x 115 mm). Original blue cloth, spine lettered in blue, title to front cover in white and blue. Spine toned and slightly leaning, extremities rubbed, endpapers toned and a little foxed: a very good copy.