Mitchison (Naomi) We Have Been Warned.

A novel
London, Constable, 1935.

First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 8/6.

Naomi Mitchison’s most controversial and long-suppressed novel, drawing on her 1932 visit to the Soviet Union to treat contraception, abortion, rape and sexual politics with a candour few 1930s publishers would touch. Victor Gollancz refused it outright, warning that “publication of the book would cause a real outcry”; it was passed over elsewhere, extensively rewritten and toned down, and reached print only through Constable – and even then the government privately weighed a prosecution, as files declassified in 2005 revealed. A landmark of interwar feminist and socialist fiction, uncommon in the first edition in jacket.