BRITTON, Nan.

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The President's Daughter. First edition, the author's own copy, with her signed bookplate on each pastedown and her inscription "property - Nan Britton" to the front free endpaper. The first memoir by an American presidential mistress, it recounts Britton's six-year affair with President Warren G. Harding and the birth of their daughter, Elizabeth Ann.Britton powerfully asserts the dignity of unmarried mothers and the rights of children born out of wedlock. She calls for legislation requiring every child's father to be correctly registered, and for all children to be treated as legitimate.Britton self-published the book after she failed to secure a publisher. The book caused a sensation even before publication: at the instigation of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, the police seized the sheets and printing plates, which were returned only after the case was dismissed. The first printing, as here, has a notice concerning the seizure of the plates mounted on the front free endpaper; in later printings the notice is printed as part of the book."The President's Daughter is noteworthy as the first sensational, tell-all political autobiography in the United States... the scandal caused by the book has contributed to Harding's consistent historical evaluation as one of the worst US presidents" (Rollyson, p. 696). Perhaps more significantly, "Britton's book was shocking not only because of its allegations but also for its frank discussion of sexuality, reproduction,

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