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PRESS CUTTINGS a topical sketch compiled from the editorial and correspondence columns of the daily papers by Bernard Shaw, as performed by the Civic and Dramatic Guild at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on the 9th July 1909. Archibald Constable & Co. Ltd. London: 1909. £ 125 FIRST EDITION. 12mo, pp. [iv], 39, [1]; minor light foxing to half title, otherwise clean throughout; in the original pink printed wraps, chipping to head and tail of spine, lightly sunned and dust-soiled, but still a good copy. First edition of Bernard Shaw’s satirical farce, Press Cuttings , written during a holiday in North Africa. ‘The “Woman’s War in 1909” was the suffragette’s struggle for the right to vote, supported by Shaw - he wrote Press Cuttings in aid of the London Society for Women’s Suffrage - but opposed by the then Liberal Government led by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith (1852-1928). In Press Cuttings there is a prime minister named Balsquith (neatly incorporating former Conservative Prime Minister Arthur Balfour [1848-1930] into the equation) who enters dressed as a woman. Another character is named General Mitchener, too close a parallel in the Examiner of Play’s mind to Boer War hero General Kitchener (1850-1916). Because of these personal allusions (more so than because of its attack on government policy) the play was denied a licence, causing the production at the Royal Court Theatre on 9 July 1909 (repeated on 12 July) to be given as a “private reception”, by invitation only. When Shaw later agreed to drop the names of Balsquith and Mitchener (he changed them to Bones and Johnson), a licensed production of Press Cuttings was given in Manchester on 27 September 1909’ (Mrs. Warren’s Profession edited by Leonard Conolly, [2005], p. 65). Laurence A97a: the second impression of 2000 copies (printed 12-13 July 1909). Imprint on upper wrapper reads “Price One Shilling. Net.” 2. BJORKMAN, Frances M. and Annie G. Porritt, editors . WOMAN SUFFRAGE. History, Arguments and Results. A collection of seven popular booklets covering practically the entire field of suffrage claims and evidence. Designed especially for the convenience of suffrage speakers and writers and for the use of debaters and libraries. New York, National Woman Suffrage Pub. Co., May, 1915. £ 185 FIRST EDITION. 12mo, pp. 231, [1] blank; in the original blue publisher’s cloth, lettered in black on upper cover, some light rubbing to extremities, otherwise a very good copy. Uncommon collection of seven essays relating to the suffrage movement in America. Titles as follows, A brief history of the movement for woman suffrage in the United States , by Ida H. Harper; Where women vote , by Frances M. Björkman and Annie G. Porritt; Man and woman-made laws of the suffrage states , by Elinor Byrnes and Helen A. Ranlett; Why women should vote , by Jane Addams; Do you know? by Carrie C. Catt; Objections answered , by Alice S. Blackwell; and The sentiment for woman suffrage . 3. [CONOLAN, Gertrude]. COLLECTION OF MATERIAL RELATING TO THE LIFE OF SUFFRAGETTE GERTRUDE CONOLAN (1872-1936). [Various places] c. 1906-1920s. £ 2,850 List of items as follows : I. Four portraits of Conolan, one in watercolour, three in pencil, by her sister Amy Catherine Conolan, who was a professional ‘black and white’ artist - see below . II. A cutting from the Daily Chronicle for 10 June 1908 reproducing information about the WSPU demonstration to be held in Hyde Park on the 21st June and including photographs of the speakers. Gertrude Conolan was the speaker at Platform 16. It is from this photograph that it is possible to identify her for certainty as the sitter of the portraits. The cutting has fallen into separate sections along the folds, but can be pieced together. III. An original photograph of Gertrude Conolan, speaking from a barouche at the Newcastle bye-election. The photograph was published in the Daily Mirror on the 21st September 1908 and the caption revealed that the principal man in the photograph was Mr George Renwick, the Unionist candidate who ‘coming upon a crowd addressed by Miss Conolan , one of the suffragette workers, courteously interrupted her to ask how long she intended speaking, as he wished to address the same gathering. Clearly she ordered a copy of the photograph. Mounted and unframed. IV. Gertrude Conolan’s pocket notebook, in which she has written on separate pages, in alpabetical order, the addresses of suffrage societies, not just the main ones such as the WSPU & Women’s Freedom League, but many of the relatively obscure such as the Suffrage Vigilance League, Women’s Writer’s Suffrage League and the Artist’s Suffrage League, who evidently met at the ‘Brittany Studio’, 259 King’s Road, Chelsea. Notebook, 65mm x 45mm, Original limp morocco wraps, c. 1913. V. A mounted photograph of Gertrude Conolan and dog, standing outside her house, 65 Medfield Road, Roehampton. c. 1920s. VI. A letter from her father, written in Dec 1914 from his home (he had been living for some time in the US, in - apparently quite coincidentally - Medfield, a suburb of Boston) setting out the immediate history of her family. This was apparently in answer to an enquiry she had made. Her grandfather had been a ship’s doctor on the ‘Chanticleer’, which had done surveying work around the coast of South America and was the ship, before it was condemned too ricketty, that Darwin was to have travelled on - the ‘Beagle’ being selected instead. VII. A letter from her step-mother, sent from the US in 1916, after her father’s death, thanking her for the care she had taken of him - a letter obviously treasured to have been kept. VIII. An engraved copper plate for reproducing ‘Miss Gertrude Conolan’ visiting cards. IX. Two sheets of notepaper headed ‘Medfield, Roehampton’. X. A square ceramic photograph of a woman, likely to be Gertrude Conolan’s mother. c. 1870. A rare opportunity to acquire a group of items belonging to a Suffragette, including original sketches, photographs and a notebook containing the addresses of several suffrage societies. Gertrude Conolan (1872-?) was ‘born in Cheshire, the grand-daughter of two MP’s, one of whom was Sir Oswald Mosley, MP for Burton-on-Trent. She was educated at St. Margaret’s Convent, East Grinstead, at a Kindergarten Training College, and in Paris. She was a teacher at Highbury and Islington GPDST High School when she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1906. She became treasurer of the Kensington branch and had a platform at the Hyde Park Demonstration in June 1908. By October 1908 she had moved to Scotland, as WSPU organiser in Glasgow, where she remained until at least December 1910. She took part in the “Black Friday” demonstration in Parliament Square in November 1910. In 1911 Gertrude Conolan subscribed to the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. In August 1911 she succeeded Joan Dugdale as secretary of the Actresses’ Franchise League and in November 1912, while retaining the position, also became honorary secretary of the newly formed Federated Council of Suffrage Societies’(Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement , p. 138). The present collection provides an unusual opportunity to acquire several sketches of a suffragette, one is dated Oct 1906, just about the time Conolan joined the WSPU. The artist, her sister, Amy, had met some success, as an illustrator of the Daily Mirror strip cartoon ‘Pip and Squeak’, her work appearing in the very first ‘Pip and Squeak’ annual. However, she sadly met a dreadful end, dying in a house fire at her home at Clonmel Road, Teddington, in Jan 1925. Gertrude testified that her sister, as an artist, preferred candlelight to gaslight. An awful warning. We can find no further details of Gertrude’s later life, nor the exact date of her death. 4. DICEY, Albert Venn. LETTERS TO A FRIEND ON VOTES FOR WOMEN. London, John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1909. £ 250 FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. vii, [i], 93, [1] blank; a very good copy in the original printed wraps, spine lightly sunned. Scarce first edition of Albert Venn Dicey’s contentious Letters presenting his case against women being given the vote, which ultimately spawned Bertrand Russell’s rebuke, ‘Anti-Suffragist Anxieties’, a year later. ‘Of the many dangers Dicey perceived as threatening Edwardian Britain, he anticipated as the greatest calamity the implementation of Irish Home Rule. In fact, the danger that women might be inclined to vote for Home Rule was the dominant consideration in his decision to oppose suffrage. On all questions except for the continued integration of Ireland within the United Kingdom and opposition to women’s suffrage, Dicey claimed that he was prepared “to make very considerable concessions”. As a right-wing Liberal Unionist, Dicey took stands antithetical to those of Russell on almost every major issue of the day.