Keller, David. Sexual Education. 10 volume set. New York: Roman Publishing Company, 1928.
(150 x 110 mm) 10 volumes. Bound in matching red cardboard with book-patterned motif and roundelle with title and author in center. Sporadic clinical illustrations. Volume title on spine. Some volumes have chips or scuffs to cardboard, worm hole to cover of Sex and Family though the Age; one page torn with no loss to text in Sexual Education of the Young Man. Conditions range from FAIR to VERY GOOD.
David Henry Keller was an American physician, neuropsychiatrist, and prolific writer, whose work spans science fiction, fantasy, horror, and non-fiction. Born in Philadelphia in 1880, he earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1903. Throughout his life, Keller combined his medical career—including working with shell-shock in World War I and World War II—with a rich literary output.
Though he began writing short stories as a hobby, Keller went on to publish dozens of stories in the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 30s, and numerous novels thereafter, drawing heavily on his psychiatric experience. His fiction is noted less for technical polish than for its emotional seriousness, imaginative concepts, and frequent engagement with themes of abnormal psychology, societal change, mortality, and the human condition. Later on, he published scholarly works on Lovecraft’s work and Mervyn Peake.
In non-fiction, Keller produced the Sexual Education Series (1932), a 10-volume set covering topics such as courtship, marriage, sex life throughout adulthood, the problems of old age, and the social implications of sexuality. These works stand out for their attempt to treat sexuality and human relations with medical, psychological, historical, and social attention. Though, perhaps, better than contemporary disucssions of the topic which were heavily moralistic or purely prescriptive, Keller’s work still was thouroughly couched in the Christian and patriarchical mores of his time.
Keller’s legacy is complex: praised by contemporaries for his originality, compassion, and for pushing beyond conventional boundaries of genre and subject matter; criticized by others for ideological elements that reflect troubling prejudices of his era. Nevertheless, Keller remains a significant figure in early 20th-century American literature, particularly in how he brought his medical understanding to bear on issues of sexuality, aging, gender, and the psychological dimensions of human life.
The 10 volume set of Sexual Education consists of the following titles:
Sex and Society
Sexual Dieases and Abnormalities of Adult Life
Mother and Baby
Sex and Family Through the Ages
Love, Courtship and Marriage
Diseases and Problems of Old Age
Companionate Marriage, Birth Control, Divorce, Modern Home Life
Sexual Life of Men and Women over Forty
Sexual Education of the Young Man
Sexual Education of the Young Woman
Illustrations from Sexual Education of the Young Man; Sexual Education of the Young Woman; Sexual Dieases and Abnormalities of Adult Life; Mother and Baby.
Sold as set only.