KAGAWA, Toyohiko; I. Fukumoto; T. Satchell (trans.).

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Before the Dawn. First British edition, presentation copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper "To Dame Adelaide Anderson, With author's compliment, Toyohiko Kagawa, April 22, 1925". An autograph letter to Anderson and Kagawa's calling card are loosely inserted. Anderson and Kagawa were both active campaigners for women's suffrage and labour reform in the early 20th century.Kagawa Toyohiko (1888-1960) was an evangelical Christian who campaigned to eliminate poverty, exposed practices of illegal prostitution and marriage, advocated for women's suffrage, and was arrested for participating in strikes in 1921 and 1922. Dame Adelaide Anderson (1863-1936) was a British labour activist, lecturer for the Women's Cooperative Guild, and HM Principal Lady Inspector of Factories from 1897 to 1921.Kagawa profusely thanks Anderson in his loosely inserted letter: "My dear Dame Anderson, really, I do not know how to express my thanks to you but to repeat it. Thank you! I shall remember it even when I go back to Japan". Before the Dawn was first published in Japanese in 1920, followed by an English translation in 1922. It was popular enough to warrant a revised translation in 1924, published in both New York, followed by this British edition in 1925. "Nothing in recent years, unless it be the novels of Dostoievsky, concerns itself with this life and this day more passionately or more poignantly than this novel of a human spirit in search of the truth" (p. v).

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