Adam's First Wife by Speller, Jane & Robert - 1929

New York: The Macaulay Company, 1929. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. 0x0x0. First edition (Bleiler 2077). Minor loss from jacket corners, 1 inch closed tear to front jacket edge, jacket a bit toned. 1929 Hard Cover. 243 pp. 8vo. From the jacket flap: "Archeological discoveries in ancient Babylon, the first home of Adam and the site of the Garden of Eden, have given the inspiration to the authors for their divertive story of Lilith, the eternal feminine, the temptress, who was the same when she first charmed Adam, as she is today to all the sons of housewife Eve. For Adam was a grass widower when he married Eve. He was Admu I, King of Sumer and Akkad, and the story of his life with Lilith, his first queen, is known to scholars of Sumerian Civilization. Lilith tells the story herself; Lilith the immortal who knows that it is love that makes her immortal. Her gay adventures continue in our time; and the world will live, she prophesies, as long as her zest for love continues -- and her zest is eternal." Bleiler 2077: "Probably an aftermath to George S. Viereck and Paul Eldridge's My First Two Thousand Years. A euhemeristic treatment of biblical legends. The first person narrative of Lilith, Adam's first wife, makes it clear that Lilith was only a Sumerian woman, and that Adam was King Admu of Sumer and Akkad, a handsome blond barbarian who succeeded to the Sumerian throne. Lilith is now about seven thousand years old, and the cause of her longevity is the sacred mushroom, which, ingested every seven years, preserves life indefinitely. In her earlier days the mushroom was grown secretly by the priests at Eridu and was available only to high male nobles and the high priests. It is probably a survival of Atlantean civilization, for Sumeria was an Atlantean colony. There is, however, one disadvantage to the mushroom: it causes sterility in women. For this reason, and another that emerges later, it is forbidden to women. Lilith, although a sympathetic, level-headed, well-meaning woman, is also a schemer and striver, and even before she is married to King Admu she managed to partake of the mushroom. After her marriage, politics and seduction of the high priest keep her supplied. Admu, a selfish, pompous blockhead, is obsessed with a temple prophecy that he will found a new, superior race of men and is irritated at Lilith's sterility. Just at the time that Lilith is preparing a fraudulent pregnancy, Admu retires to the north to meditate on the meaning of life. On one hand, his departure is a disaster, for he is a sacred king considered the incarnation of a god; the people are likely to rebel if it became known that he is away, especially since the economy is bad. On the other hand his absence gives the intelligent Lilith and the minister of finance a chance to save the kingdom from bankruptcy because of over-ambitious building projects. Admu drops out of sight for a time, but Lilith's spies locate him in a fertile, garden-like area, where he has mated with a handsome blonde woman. The narrative then follows the biblical account on a rationalistic level, for it is Lilith's soldiers, not angels, that expel Adam and his wife from the garden. Lilith returns to the capital and rules wisely for hundreds of years, until Sumeria falls. Up until recently she has been able to obtain her mushrooms, since she knows a secret entrance to the otherwise blocked cave. But when the British happened to bomb the area, they sealed the entrance and she can no longer obtain the mushrooms. She must finish her life as an ordinary woman. The authors use Sumerian terms during the narrative, but provide a brief glossary at the end of the book. Without the occasional wit or ideas of the Viereck and Eldridge work.