Marriage and Morals.

RUSSELL, Bertrand.

$2,200.00

Item Number: 117490

New York: Horace Liveright, 1929.

First edition of this work by Russell, in which he questions the Victorian notions of morality regarding sex and marriage. Octavo, original cloth. Signed by Bertrand Russell on the front free endpaper. In near fine condition. An exceptional signed example.

According to Russell, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for Marriage and Morals. "When I was called to Stockholm, at the end of 1950, to receive the Nobel Prize -- somewhat to my surprise, for literature, for my book Marriage and Morals -- I was apprehensive, since I remembered that, exactly 300 years earlier, Descartes had been called to Scandinavia by Queen Christina in the winter time and had died of the cold" (Russell, Autobiography p. 521). which Russell questions the Victorian notions of morality regarding sex and marriage. In Marriage and Morals, Russell argues that the laws and ideas about sex of his time were a potpourri from various sources, which were no longer valid with the advent of contraception, as the sexual acts are now separated from the conception. He argues that family is most important for the welfare of children, and as such, a man and a woman should be considered bound only after her first pregnancy.