Native Diet signed by Ettie Rout first edition 1926

ROUT, Ettie A. (Mrs F. A. Hornibrook). – Native Diet: With Numerous Practical Recipes. Preface by Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane.
 
London: William Heinemann (Medical Books) Ltd., 1926.
 
First edition. 8vo. pp. ix, 140, [4 publisher’s ads]. With a frontispiece portrait of Tomika Te Mutu, a chief of the House of Arawa. Original black cloth, printed paper label to upper cover and spine. A clean, square copy, with an abrasion patch on the upper board and minor toning / foxing to endpapers. Presentation copy, inscribed on the half-title: “To Miss Vera Mulholland / With the author’s compliments / London Dec. 3/26 / Ettie A. Rout.”
 
Rout (1877–1936), a New Zealand-born health reformer, writer, and campaigner for women’s sexual health, became a highly controversial figure during and after the First World War for her work on contraception and venereal disease prevention among soldiers. In Native Diet she turns her attention to nutrition and foodways, presenting an anthropologically informed argument for the health benefits of “native” dietary practices, supported by practical recipes. The work reflects both contemporary anxieties about diet and degeneration, and Rout’s wider interest in social hygiene and radical reform. It is an uncommon title signed.