''Adam's Breed'' was a 1926 novel by the English writer

Radclyffe Hall Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) was an English poet and author, best known for the novel ''The Well of Loneliness'', a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. In adulthood, Hall often went by the name Jo ...

. On its publication it won the

James Tait Black Memorial Prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Unit ...

for fiction and the Femina Vie Heureuse prize for best English novel. It tells the story of a British-Italian waiter, a member of the

Lost Generation The Lost Generation was the social generational cohort in the Western world that was in early adulthood during World War I. "Lost" in this context refers to the "disoriented, wandering, directionless" spirit of many of the war's survivors in the ...

disillusioned by life during and after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, who becomes a hermit.

Plot

It concerns Teresa Boselli, a strong, perhaps Amazonian, woman, and her orphaned grandson Gian-Luca who as a young man works as a waiter in London, before joining the army during

which he survives due to being posted to a catering position in the Army Service Corps. After the war, he is troubled by his experiences and the bloodshed of the war, even though he did not serve on the front line. Finding himself disgusted by food, he rejects his old life, becomes a hermit and lives in a forest, before he dies aged 34.

Writing and publication

Una Troubridge Una Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge (born Margot Elena Gertrude Taylor; 8 March 1887 – 24 September 1963) was a British sculptor and translator. She is best known as the long-time lesbian partner of Marguerite Radclyffe Hall, author of ''The We ...

, Hall's partner, claimed that the novel was originally to have been called ''Food'', but due to fears that it would be mistaken for a cookery book, the new title was selected from

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. ...

's poem "Tomlinson": "I am all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that ye should give me scorn". It was published in March 1926 and with considerable promotion it proved a popular success, with its fourth reprint coming just 3 weeks after first publication. It was published by

Doubleday, Page Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 and was the largest in the United States by 1947. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed th ...

in the US and by Cassell in the UK.

Critical reaction

In 1949, ''

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...

'' in a not terribly positive review criticised Hall's prose style as Victorian and noted that ''Adam's Breed'' had the same plot as ''

The Well of Loneliness ''The Well of Loneliness'' is a lesbian novel by British author Radclyffe Hall that was first published in 1928 by Jonathan Cape. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose " sexual inversion" (homo ...

'' and '' The Unlit Lamp'': "lack of the right kind of love in childhood". Richard Dellamora in his study of Hall calls it her "first religious novel" and relates it to

James George Frazer Sir James George Frazer (; 1 January 1854 – 7 May 1941) was a Scottish social anthropologist and folklorist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion. Personal life He was born on 1 Janua ...

's ''

The Golden Bough ''The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion'' (retitled ''The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion'' in its second edition) is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir ...

'' with the figure of a sacrifice to the Mother Goddess. Dellamora sees Gian-Luca's death as having religious symbolism, with the young man partly a Christ figure, but also in his name echoing Jesus's disciples John and Luke.

References

External links

* {{HathiTrust, htid=inu.30000011829193 1926 British novels Doubleday, Page & Company books Cassell (publisher) books