PARSONS, Elsie Clews Social Rule. A Study of the Will to Power. New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons/The Knickerbocker Press. 1916.

PARSONS, Elsie Clews Social Rule. A Study of the Will to Power. New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons/The Knickerbocker Press. 1916.

[vi],185 pp. + 4 pp advertisements; untrimmed and partly unopened; some underlining in blue pencil to preliminary pages. Original cloth, a little rubbed. First edition.

Elsie Clews (1875-1941) was born in New York, she taught sociology at Barnard College from 1899 to 1905, and in 1900 married Herbert Parsons. A prolific writer, many of her sociological studies were concerned with the free expression of personality in the face of the constraints of convention; her early works, however, did not sell well, 'Social Rule' having sold only 281 copies by early 1918. Her later achievements as an anthropologist were more widely recognised. She was President of the American Folklore Society in 1919-1920 and editor of its journal from 1918 until her death; she was the first woman elected President of the American Anthropological Association.