Adam's Breed

[3] Una Troubridge, 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's poem "Tomlinson": "I am all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that ye should give me scorn".

[4] 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.

In 1949, The Spectator 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 and The Unlit Lamp: "lack of the right kind of love in childhood".

[6] Richard Dellamora in his study of Hall calls it her "first religious novel" and relates it to James George Frazer's The Golden Bough 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.