BEFORE ADAM
by London, Jack
- Used
- first
- Condition
- See description
- Seller
-
Yarmouth, Maine, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
First Edition of this odd novel written several years earlier, not long after THE CALL OF THE WILD, during London's three-year "long sickness." Just as much of that novel consists of Buck's bad dreams, so in BEFORE ADAM the nameless narrator describes his strange dreams which, he asserts, are memories of a prehistoric ancestor named Big Tooth. Like Jack, the dreamer in BEFORE ADAM suffered a procession of nightmares, full of forests and horrors without end, great serpents and prowling monsters; he had lost his true primeval father, and his alien stepfather pushed him out of the treehouse where he lived with his suspicious and unprogressive mother into the tooth-and-claw world of prehistory. As an atavistic projection of Jack's distorted vision of his deprived childhood, the opening of BEFORE ADAM can serve as a document in Jungian analysis. [Sinclair] This is a near-fine copy (very slight rubbing at the extremities, partial darkening of the endpapers); the front free endpaper bears a calligraphic "My Sweetheart Boy". Sisson & Martens p. 34; Blanck 11903; a Johnson High Spot ("The life of prehistoric man so fascinates me that I am compelled to include this book").
Synopsis
A young man in modern America is terrorized by visions of an earlier, primitive life. Across the enormous chasm of thousands of centuries, his consciousness has become entwined with that of Big-Tooth, an ancestor living at the dawn of humanity. Big-Tooth makes his home in Pleistocene Africa, a ferocious, fascinating younger world torn by incessant conflict between early humans and protohumans. Before Adam is a remarkable and provocative tale that thrust evolution further into the public spotlight in the early twentieth century and has since become a milestone of speculative fiction. The brilliance of the book lies not only in its telling but also in its imaginative projection of a mindset for early humans. Capitalizing on his recognized ability to understand animals, Jack London paints an arresting and dark portrait of how our distant ancestors thought about themselves and their world.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Sumner & Stillman (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 14914
- Title
- BEFORE ADAM
- Author
- London, Jack
- Book Condition
- Used
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Date Published
- 1907
- Keywords
- Prehistoric; Johnson Hispot; Fantasy
- Bookseller catalogs
- Fiction (Early 20th Century);
Terms of Sale
Sumner & Stillman
About the Seller
Sumner & Stillman
About Sumner & Stillman
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Rubbing
- Abrasion or wear to the surface. Usually used in reference to a book's boards or dust-jacket.
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...