Love's Creation: A Novel by Marie Stopes, Author of Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties

Marie Stopes' work in the area of sexual health and contraception has left a lasting legacy, and she is widely acknowledged as one of the most significant figures of the twentieth century. Her Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties was first published in 1918, translated into thirteen languages and sold over a million copies. Stopes also ardently pursued her enthusiasm for literature throughout her life, writing novels, plays and poetry. Her novel Love's Creation, published in 1928, the year women obtained the vote, is a working through of the debates which she addressed both in her personal and public life: sexual relations, the relationship between the arts and sciences, the quest for female sexual fulfillment. Marie Stopes' campaigning on behalf of a more open attitude to women's sexuality, equality in marriage, and sexual health and contraception, and her opening of the first free birth control clinic in the British Empire in 1921, saw her at the centre of political controversy, not least in her battle with the Roman Catholic church. Love's Creation, republished here for the first time since 1928, offers fascinating insights into early twentieth-century women's writing, most notably Virginia Woolf's theories of female creativity / fulfilled female sexuality which is not under threat from motherhood; female economic and psychic freedom; and the social milieu of the time. It is an engaging and fast moving narrative with lively, well-drawn and unconventional characters. The novel poses important questions about women's choices and aspirations before, during and after marriage. Not surprisingly it also engages in still contemporary and vital debates about the relationship between the sciences and the arts, and theories of evolution.

About the Author :
Deryn Rees-Jones' books include 'The Memory Tray' (Seren, 1995), shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection; 'Signs Round a Dead Body' (Seren, 1998); 'Quiver' (Seren, 2004); 'Burying the Wren' (2012), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize; and, with Charlotte Hodes, 'And You, Helen' (Seren, 2014). 'What It's Like to Be Alive: Selected Poems' (Seren, 2016) was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. In 2004 she was named as one of Mslexia’s ‘top ten’ women poets of the decade, and one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. In 2010 she received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors. She is also the author of a groundbreaking critical study of women's poetry, 'Consorting with Angels' (Bloodaxe, 2005), which was published alongside her accompanying anthology 'Modern Women Poets' (Bloodaxe, 2005). Her new book of poems, 'Erato', is due from Seren in 2019, and a monograph on the work of Portuguese artist Paula Rego is forthcoming from Thames and Hudson. She currently holds a Major Leverhulme Fellowship, and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Liverpool.