BEFORE ADAM. In five issues of Everybody's Magazine.
New York: The Ridgway Company, October 1906 - February 1907. Original color pictorial wrappers.
First Appearance of this odd prehistoric novel -- in which the nameless narrator describes his strange dreams which, he asserts, are memories of a prehistoric ancestor named Big Tooth. In writing this, London borrowed heavily from Stanley Waterloo's THE STORY OF AB; he replied to charges of plagiarism by acknowledging his debt to that book, while insisting that primitive man was within the realm of the public domain. Charmian London later wrote that the novel "went into the universities of the United States as a text-book in Anthropology" [Walker & Sisson].
The novel is complete in these five issues; upon its conclusion in February 1907, the book itself was published, with added illustrations by Charles Livingston Bull. Everybody's Magazine was a hefty publication! -- each issue containing about 140 pages of text, plus more than that number in ads. There are many interesting articles, such as one filled with photographs of men (and boys!) engaged in dangerous professions like mining or the construction of skyscrapers, tunnels and bridges. The front cover of the first issue shows the same prehistoric footprints that would appear on the front cover of the book; the front cover of the last issue includes a swastika, decades before it incurred a new meaning.
The issues are in very good-plus condition, with minor soil and with nicks in the wrapper edges; an inch-plus of spine paper is chipped away from about half of the spine ends. Walker & Sisson 13 (page 15); also see Sisson & Martens p. 34, and Blanck 11903; a Johnson High Spot ("The life of prehistoric man so fascinates me that I am compelled to include this book"). Item #15820
Price: $495.00