HOW I BECOME A VEGETARIAN.

Description: 8vo. - First edition of this very rare essay printed by the Doves Press, of which only a few copies were printed for friends. Tidcombe locates only 5 copies, stating that "it is not known how many copies were printed". - Anne, or Annie, Cobden-Sanderson (1853-1923), was the daughter of the Liberal reformer Richard Cobden, and wife of T.J. Coben-Sanderson, bookbinder and founder of the Doves Press. She lived for a while at the home of William Morris. Anne suggested her husband to take up book-binding. He thus founded the Doves Press in 1900 with the photographer Emery Walker. The Press started at No 1 The Terrace, Hammersmith, and moved in 1909 to 15 Upper Mall, Hammersmith (the press being named after a strip or passage in this street). The partnership between Cobden-Sanderon and Walker was dissolved in 1909 and the printing stopped a few years later, in 1916. Anne Cobden-Sanderson was also an active suffragette working for the Labour Party. She was arrested in October 1906 and in 1910 during a violent demonstration on the order of Winston Churchill (even though he knew her well). She was one of the founding members of the "Women's Freedom League" and helped to form the "Women's Tax Resistance League" in 1909. She studied vegetarianism, became a vegetarian at age 20, and in 1908 formed the New Food Reform Movement with Sarah Grand and vegetarians Charlotte Despard, Beatrice Webb and Seebohm Rowntree. Their aim was to enlighten public opinion about healthy eating. Printed in Doves type, font created by Walker. - Ref. Tidcombe, The Doves Press, DPE92. - Not in Tomkinson, Ransom. - Prov. [Cobden-Sanderson family], cfr a letter from the bookseller Colin Franklin to Marianne Delvaulx, stating that her [our] copy was sold by the family and bought by him at an "unexpected auction"; "they must have been turning out their drawers or boxes or attics" (cfr letter joined). Colin Franklin adds about the book "prepared for binding but never bound" that "I [he] find[s] it of some interest to see a Doves Bindery book in that form, apart from anything else, for it shows the way of boarding and sewing and covering with spare bits of Doves printing".

Condition: Sewn into pasteboards [by the Doves Bindery] with 5 brown silk threads, covered with leaves of Doves catalogue (books in preparation in June 1905 (in double) and books out of print). Within a box of (late 20th-c.) blue morocco, by James Borckman, titled in gilt on upper panel (spine faded). Artist Name: COBDEN-SANDERSON, Anne Circa: 1908)