Bertrand Russell’s damning critique of Victorian notions of marriage and sexuality, one of his most genuinely popular works within his own lifetime.
In his Autobiography, Russell cited the book as the principal reason for being awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature:
‘When I was called to Stockholm, at the end of 1950, to receive the Nobel Prize – somewhat to my surprise, for literature, for my book Marriage and Morals – I was apprehensive, since I remembered that, exactly 300 years earlier, Descartes had been called to Scandinavia by Queen Christina in the winter time and had died of the cold.’