Women Servants of the State 1870-1938.: A History of Women in the Civil Service. Foreword by the Right Hon. The Earl Baldwin of Bewdley K. G.

London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd,, 1938. First edition, first impression, a history of women in the British civil service, a defence of their role, and an exposition of the systemic disadvantages they face; from the library of suffrage and cultural historian Rosamund Billington, with her signed bookplate. Hilda Martindale (1875-1952) joined the Home Office in 1907 as a factory inspector and later moved to the Treasury, where she would remain until retirement. Martindale was a vocal advocate for improving working conditions in the civil service, particularly for women, as well as for the removal of the marriage bar. The study "presented the case for women civil servants. Martindale was critical of a system which worked to women's disadvantage, and she highlighted the prejudice of second-rate men, but she was careful to give credit by name to those men in the civil service who she believed had encouraged women" (ODNB). Billington's Ph.D. thesis was titled "The women's education and suffrage movements, 1850-1914: innovation and institutionalism" (Hull University, 1976), and her publications include "Ideology and feminism: Why the suffragettes were 'wild women'" (1982), "Women, politics and local liberalism: from female suffrage to votes for women" (1985), and papers on the feminism of British women abolitionists. She has since published extensively in social theory and cultural anthropology. Octavo. Original grey cloth, spine lettered in silver. With dust jacket. Pencilled ownership inscription to front free endpaper. Light sunning to spine, very good in like jacket, spine panel a little darkened and rubbed, some wear at extremities repaired with tape on verso.