Man's World

In a eugenics-driven future society, will one young woman’s defiance make a difference?

In the not-too-distant future, England’s population quality and quantity are under scientific control: Only those deemed the fittest are permitted to procreate. Women are groomed to be “vocational mothers”—or else sterilized and put to other uses. Written by an author married to one of the world’s most prominent eugenics advocates, this ambivalent adventure anticipates both Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale. When a young woman rebels against her conditioning, can she break free?

Charlotte Haldane (1894–1969) was a journalist who advocated for divorce reform and married women’s employment . . . while also idealizing motherhood. In 1926, the year that Man’s World was published, she married the eminent biologist J. B. S. Haldane. Her 1927 book, Motherhood and Its Enemies, made a progressive argument for easier access to contraceptives for women . . . while enraging feminists by arguing that only after having borne children could a woman be regarded as “normal.” She went on to found the Science News Service, and reported on World War II from the Russian Front.

Philippa Levine is Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas, and Director of British, Irish, and Empire Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of, among other books, Eugenics: A Very Short Introduction (2017), The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset (3rd edition, 2019), and the forthcoming The Tree of Knowledge: Science, Art and the Naked Form. With Alison Bashford, she is coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (2010).

CONTENTS
Series Foreword ix
Introduction xv
Philippa Levine
Acknowledgment 1

1 The Vision of Mensch 5
2 How Humphrey Was Made 25
3 Women and Children First 45
4 From the General to the Particular 61
5 The Voyages of Christopher 71
6 A People Unbound 83
7 No New Gods for Old 103
8 Reconstruction 115
9 Catalysis 131
10 Antibodies 153
11 Usness 191
12 Unreality 223
13 Back to the Future 255