Between the Covers

Hardcover. First edition. Quarto. 176pp. Black vertically striped linen and brown burlap over boards with title lettering in red. Pictorial endpapers. Very good with the rear hinge neatly repaired, some staining on the front board, and with typical owner name and student inscriptions and autographs, including the Signature of Betty Friedan as Bettye Goldstein.

The 1938 yearbook of Peoria High School featuring senior class member Friedan, the author of *The Feminine Mystique* and important writer of post-war American feminism. Photographic appearances of her abound: Quill and Scroll club group photo (p.76); Charvice Acting Club (p. 79); Red Cross club (p.86); Senior Class play *Jane Eyre* (p.88); TIDE student newspaper (p.96); newspaper "opinion" (p.100); and her class portrait (p.141).

Friedan wrote about her hometown in a 1978 *New York Times* article written during a return trip to Peoria for her 40th senior class reunion titled "The E.R.A," in part: "I dreaded that high school reunion. I had gone to the 25th in 1963, the year my book 'The Feminine Mystique' was published, taking my husband and my children so they could see where mother came from. And no one would sit with us at the banquet. My brother's father in law took his grandchildren out of town lest they be contaminated by their radical aunt, and the next morning, the tree outside the house where we were staying was festooned with toilet paper."

We suspect Friedan's own copy resides with her papers at Harvard's Schlesinger Library, though the volume appears unrecorded in *OCLC*. A compelling primary source.

Item #437942