Claire L. Jones is Senior Lecturer in the History of Medicine at the University of Kent.

• Introduction: contraceptive commercialisation before the Pill1 The dynamics of production: contraceptive manufacturing2 Shaping markets: packaging, brands and trademarks 3 The print culture of contraceptives: advertising and the circulation of birth control knowledge4 ‘As honest as business permits’: medical practitioners, birth control clinics and contraceptive efficacy5 Over the counter and on the high street: contraceptive retailing in the urban landscapeEpilogue

'[...] a much-needed addition'.Metascience'The work of Jones and Drucker reveals key insights into how commerce and technology were both powerful enough forces to overcome the medical and legal restrictions that shaped reproductive health in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also maintained and even exacerbated racial and gendered reproductive inequality... absorbing and critiquing these lessons from the past will be a crucial task in the making of this century’s reproductive policies of access and inclusion.'Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, USA, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2023