Boston Public Library Digitizes the Earliest “Our Bodies, Ourselves” Books
The very first printings are now available on Digital Commonwealth
Maybe you had one of the rare earliest printings. The ones from 1970 to 1973, published on newsprint by the New England Free Press. They’re sepia colored like old photographs, with the rough texture of a thin paper bag, and held together by staples. The very first publication by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective wasn’t even called “Our Bodies, Ourselves” – its title was “Women and Their Bodies.”
Thanks to a digitization project completed by Special Collections at the Boston Public Library, the public can now freely read, search, and browse these very first versions of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” on Digital Commonwealth, a free, open-access site. Digital Commonwealth has a wide range of materials of historical interest drawn from libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies from across the state of Massachusetts.
We encourage you to explore these iconic feminist books from wherever you are, whether it’s for serious research or just curiosity. The radical spirit of women’s liberation suffuses their pages.
"Perhaps the most obvious indication of this ideology is the way that doctors treat us as women patients. We are considered stupid - mindless creatures, unable to follow instructions (known as orders). While men patients may also be treated this way, we fare worse because women are thought to be incapable of understanding or dealing with our own situation."
The precious, initial OBOS booklets dared to discuss sexual and reproductive health with revolutionary frankness. They de-mythologized women’s social roles and physiological anatomy, pregnancy and childbirth, and STIs (then called “venereal disease”). Years before Roe v Wade, they provided detailed descriptions of then-illegal abortion and contraception options. They spoke out critically about capitalism and medical institutions. They equipped their readers with knowledge, and welcomed our own knowledge in return. And they launched a global movement for women’s health.
From newsprint to digital
The project began in November 2023, when the BPL announced on Facebook that it was starting a new collection of the original “Our Bodies, Ourselves” pamphlets published by The New England Free Press. Their post inspired an outpouring of messages and memories from OBOS’s devoted readers.
“Thousands of people from all across the world have been posting about their connections to the book,” wrote Jay Moschella, Manager and Curator of Rare Books for the BPL. “Many have written in to us, offering to donate their copies, including some of the original authors, folks from NEFP, and many, many women who simply owned and used the book and remain deeply connected to their own copies.” The library’s Special Collections followed with a proposed project to digitize OBOS’s rare first printings. Digitization would make them more publicly accessible for research and general inquiry. Our Bodies Ourselves enthusiastically agreed to grant permission, under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license.
The information in the early booklets is medically outdated now, as the disclaimer on the Digital Commonwealth pages reminds us. Each new edition of “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” carefully revised and expanded its contents, up through the last print edition in 2011 (published by Simon and Schuster). Our website offers the most current, reliable, evidence-based health and sexuality resources for women and gender-expansive people.
But of course Our Bodies Ourselves has been valuable in many ways from the beginning. As the authors wrote in the very first printing, “It was even more exciting to talk about how we felt about our bodies, how we felt about ourselves, how we could become autonomous human beings, how we could act together on our collective knowledge to change the health care system for women and for all people. . . . The material has been and should be used in ways other than a course. A course is only one way of spreading the word.”
Founded in 1848 as the first large free municipal library in the United States, the Boston Public Library has a long and distinguished history of supporting education, literacy, and the freedom to read. Our Bodies Ourselves is honored to have a featured place in its physical and now digital collections. We look forward to future projects and programs in partnership with the BPL.