THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company Co-operative, [1911]. Octavo, pp. [1-3] 4-29 [30-32: ads], original cream pictorial wrappers printed in blue (illustrations by Dan Sayre Groesbeck on front and rear panels). First edition, later printing with text ending on page 29 and publisher's address in the advertisements given as "341-349 E. Ohio St." Short story, first published in HAMPTON'S MAGAZINE, March 1911, later collected in THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG (1914). "The Strength of the Strong" (1911) "completes the group of science fiction stories that grew out of London's interest in evolutionary racism, and it can also serve to introduce the other principle dimension of London's scientific thought - his theory of revolutionary socialism. This caveman story is an allegory that slyly pays tribute to Kipling ('Lip-King') in its epigraph. A prehistoric parable, it recreates the race's discovery of group solidarity, and it is also an illustration in fiction of the theories proposed by the single most important influence on London's intellectual development, Benjamin Kidd. Kidd was an Anglo-Saxon supremacist who tried to portray socialism as the next stage in Anglo-Saxon history, a stage that would allow the Anglo-Saxon to manage the world for its own good. Kidd's reconciliation of racism and socialism made his ideas invaluable to London" [Richard Gid Powers]. Angenot and Khouri, "An International Bibliography of Prehistoric Fiction," SFS, VIII (March 1981), 45. BAL 11931. See Bleiler (1978), p. 126. See Reginald 09154. A fine copy. Uncommon in this condition. (#95359).

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