Jack London
Overview
John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. He is best remembered as the author of Call of the Wild
and White Fang
, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush
, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire
", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life".
Call Of The Wild
-Track listing:All songs written by Ted Nugent, except where indicated:#"Call of the Wild" – 4:51#"Sweet Revenge" – 4:06#"Pony Express" – 5:21#"Ain't It the Truth" – 4:57#"Renegade" – 3:33...
and White Fang
White Fang
White Fang is a novel by American author Jack London. First serialized in Outing magazine, it was published in 1906. The story takes place in Yukon Territory, Canada, during the Klondike Gold Rush at the end of the 19th-century, and details a wild wolfdog's journey to domestication...
, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush
Klondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...
, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire
To Build a Fire
"To Build a Fire" is a short story by American author Jack London. The famous version of this story was published in 1908. London published an earlier and radically different version in 1902 in which the protagonist survives his ordeal, and a comparison of the two provides a dramatic illustration...
", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life".
Quotations
I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself.
Letter to Charles Warren Stoddard|Charles Warren Stoddard (21 August 1903)
Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest.
"The Sea-Wolf|The Sea-Wolf" (1904)
I love the flesh. I'm a pagan. “Who are they who speak evil of the clay? The very stars are made of clay like mine!”
Letter to Charles Warren Stoddard|Charles Warren Stoddard (11 August 1905)
Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.
White Fang|White Fang (1906)
The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances.
"To Build a Fire|To Build a Fire" published as a collection of short stories in the book Lost Face (1910)
Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.
As quoted in Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior (1991) by Dan Millman, p. 78
Too much is written by the men who can't write about the men who do write.
Ch. XXXII
Encyclopedia
John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. He is best remembered as the author of Call of the Wild
and White Fang
, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush
, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire
", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf.
London was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers and wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics such as his dystopian novel, The Iron Heel
and his non-fiction exposé, The People of the Abyss
.
builder Marshall Wellman and his first wife, Eleanor Garrett Jones. Marshall Wellman was a great-great-great-grandson of Puritan Thomas Wellman
. Flora left Ohio and moved to the Pacific coast when her father remarried after her mother died. In San Francisco, Flora worked as a music teacher and Spiritualist claiming to channel the spirit of an Indian
chief.
Biographer Clarice Stasz and others believe that London's father was astrologer
William Chaney. Flora Wellman was living with Chaney in San Francisco when she became pregnant. Whether Wellman and Chaney were legally married is unknown. Most San Francisco civil records were destroyed by the extensive fires that followed the 1906 earthquake
; it is not known with certainty what name appeared on his birth certificate. Stasz notes that in his memoirs, Chaney refers to London's mother Flora Wellman as having been his "wife" and also cites an advertisement in which Flora called herself "Florence Wellman Chaney".
According to Flora Wellman's account, as recorded in the San Francisco Chronicle
of June 4, 1875, Chaney demanded that she have an abortion
. When she refused, he disclaimed responsibility for the child. In desperation, she shot herself. She was not seriously wounded, but she was temporarily deranged. After she gave birth, Flora turned the baby over to ex-slave Virginia Prentiss, who remained a major maternal figure throughout London's life. Late in 1876, Flora Wellman married John London, a partially disabled Civil War
veteran, and brought her baby John, later known as Jack, to live with the newly married couple. The family moved around the San Francisco Bay Area
before settling in Oakland, where London completed grade school.
In 1897, when he was 21 and a student at the University of California, Berkeley
, London searched for and read the newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and the name of his biological father. He wrote to William Chaney, then living in Chicago. Chaney responded that he could not be London's father because he was impotent; he casually asserted that London's mother had relations with other men and averred that she had slandered him when she said he insisted on an abortion. He concluded that he was more to be pitied than London. London was devastated by his father's letter. In the months following, he quit school at Berkeley and went to the Klondike
.
; the California Historical Society
placed a plaque at the site in 1953. Though the family was working class, it was not as impoverished as London's later accounts claimed. London was essentially self-educated.
In 1885 London found and read Ouida
's long Victorian
novel Signa. He credited this as the seed of his literary success. In 1886 he went to the Oakland Public Library
and found a sympathetic librarian, Ina Coolbrith
, who encouraged his learning. (She later became California's first poet laureate
and an important figure in the San Francisco literary community).
In 1889, London began working 12 to 18 hours a day at Hickmott's Cannery. Seeking a way out, he borrowed money from his black foster mother Virginia Prentiss, bought the sloop
Razzle-Dazzle from an oyster pirate
named French Frank, and became an oyster pirate. In his memoir, John Barleycorn
, he claims to have stolen French Frank's mistress Mamie. After a few months, his sloop became damaged beyond repair. London became hired as a member of the California Fish Patrol.
In 1893, he signed on to the sealing schooner
Sophie Sutherland, bound for the coast of Japan. When he returned, the country was in the grip of the panic of '93
and Oakland
was swept by labor unrest. After grueling jobs in a jute mill
and a street-railway power plant, he joined Kelly's Army and began his career as a tramp. In 1894, he spent 30 days for vagrancy in the Erie County
Penitentiary at Buffalo
. In The Road, he wrote:
After many experiences as a hobo and a sailor, he returned to Oakland and attended Oakland High School
. He contributed a number of articles to the high school's magazine, The Aegis. His first published work was "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan", an account of his sailing experiences.
As a schoolboy, London often studied at Heinold's First and Last Chance
, a port side bar in Oakland. At 17, he confessed to the bar's owner, John Heinold, his desire to attend University and pursue a career as a writer. Heinold lent London tuition money to attend college.
London desperately wanted to attend the University of California, Berkeley
. In 1896 after a summer of intense studying to pass certification exams, he was admitted. Financial circumstances forced him to leave in 1897 and he never graduated. No evidence suggests that London wrote for student publications while studying at Berkeley.
While at Berkeley, London continued to study and spend time at Heinold's saloon where he was introduced to the sailors and adventurers who would influence his writing. In his autobiographical novel, John Barleycorn
, London mentioned the pub's likeness seventeen times. Heinold's was the place where London met Alexander McLean, a captain known for his cruelty at sea, whom the protagonist in London's novel The Sea-Wolf
, Wolf Larsen, is based.
Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon is now unofficially named Jack London's Rendezvous in his honor.
On July 12, 1897, London (age 21) and his sister's husband Captain Shepard sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush
. This was the setting for some of his first successful stories. London's time in the Klondike
, however, was detrimental to his health. Like so many other men who were malnourished in the goldfields, London developed scurvy
. His gums became swollen, leading to the loss of his four front teeth. A constant gnawing pain affected his hip and leg muscles, and his face was stricken with marks that always reminded him of the struggles he faced in the Klondike. Father William Judge, "The Saint of Dawson
," had a facility in Dawson that provided shelter, food and any available medicine to London and others. His struggles there inspired London's short story, "To Build a Fire
", which many critics assess as his best.
His landlords in Dawson were mining engineers Marshall Latham Bond
and Louis Whitford Bond
, educated at Yale
and Stanford. The brothers' father, Judge Hiram Bond
, was a wealthy mining investor. The Bonds, especially Hiram, were active Republicans. Marshall Bond's diary mentions friendly sparring with London on political issues as a camp pastime.
London left Oakland with a social conscience and socialist leanings; he returned to become an activist for socialism
. He concluded that his only hope of escaping the work "trap" was to get an education and "sell his brains." He saw his writing as a business, his ticket out of poverty, and, he hoped, a means of beating the wealthy at their own game. On returning to California in 1898, London began working deliberately to get published, a struggle described in his novel, Martin Eden
. His first published story was "To the Man On Trail", which has frequently been collected in anthologies. When The Overland Monthly offered him only five dollars for it—and was slow paying—London came close to abandoning his writing career. In his words, "literally and literarily I was saved" when The Black Cat accepted his story "A Thousand Deaths," and paid him $40—the "first money I ever received for a story."
London was fortunate in the timing of his writing career. He started just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines. This resulted in a boom in popular magazines aimed at a wide public, and a strong market for short fiction. In 1900, he made $2,500 in writing, about $ in current value. His career was well under way.
Among the works he sold to magazines was a short story known as either "Batard" or "Diable", in two editions of the same basic story. A cruel French Canadian brutalizes his dog. The dog retaliates and kills the man. London told some of his critics that man's actions are the main cause of the behavior of their animals, and he would show this in another short story.
In early 1903, London sold The Call of the Wild
to The Saturday Evening Post
for $750, and the book rights to Macmillan
for $2,000. Macmillan's promotional campaign propelled it to swift success.
While living at his rented villa on Lake Merritt
in Oakland, London met poet George Sterling
and in time they became best friends. In 1902, Sterling helped London find a home closer to his own in nearby Piedmont
. In his letters London addressed Sterling as "Greek," owing to his aquiline nose and classical profile, and signed them as "Wolf." London was later to depict Sterling as Russ Brissenden in his autobiographical novel Martin Eden (1910) and as Mark Hall in The Valley of the Moon (1913).
In later life London indulged his wide-ranging interests by accumulating a personal library of 15,000 volumes. He referred to his books as "the tools of my trade."
During the marriage, London continued his friendship with Anna Strunsky
, co-authoring The Kempton-Wace Letters, an epistolary novel contrasting two philosophies of love. Anna, writing "Dane Kempton's" letters, arguing for a romantic view of marriage, while London, writing "Herbert Wace's" letters, argued for a scientific view, based on Darwinism and eugenics. In the novel, his fictional character contrasted two women he had known.
London's pet name for Bess was "Mother-Girl" and Bess's for London was "Daddy-Boy". Their first child, Joan, was born on January 15, 1901, and their second, Bessie (later called Becky), on October 20, 1902. Both children were born in Piedmont, California
. Here London wrote one of his most celebrated works, The Call of the Wild
.
While London had pride in his children, the marriage was under strain. Kingman says that by 1903 they were close to separation as they were "extremely incompatible." Nevertheless, "Jack was still so kind and gentle with Bessie that when Cloudsley Johns was a house guest in February 1903 he didn't suspect a breakup of their marriage."
London reportedly complained to friends Joseph Noel and George Sterling that, "[Bessie] is devoted to purity. When I tell her morality is only evidence of low blood pressure, she hates me. She'd sell me and the children out for her damned purity. It's terrible. Every time I come back after being away from home for a night she won't let me be in the same room with her if she can help it." Stasz writes that these were "code words for [Bess's] fear that [Jack] was consorting with prostitutes and might bring home venereal disease."
On July 24, 1903, London told Bessie he was leaving and moved out. During 1904 London and Bess negotiated the terms of a divorce, and the decree was granted on November 11, 1904.
. London was elected to honorary membership in the Bohemian Club
and took part in many activities. Other noted members of the Bohemian Club during this time included Ambrose Bierce
, Allan Dunn
, John Muir
, Gelett Burgess
, and Frank Norris
.
Beginning in December 1914, London worked on The Acorn Planter, A California Forest Play, to be performed as one of the annual Grove Plays, but it was never selected—it was described as too difficult to set to music. London published The Acorn Planter in 1916.
in 1905. London was introduced to Kittredge by his MacMillan publisher, George Platt Brett, Sr.
, while Kittredge served as Brett's secretary. Biographer Russ Kingman called Charmian "Jack's soul-mate, always at his side, and a perfect match." Their time together included numerous trips, including a 1907 cruise on the yacht Snark
to Hawaii
and Australia
. Many of London's stories are based on his visits to Hawaii, the last one for 10 months beginning in December 1915.
The couple also visited Goldfield, Nevada
in 1907, where they were guests of the Bond brothers, London's Dawson City landlords. The Bond brothers were working in Nevada as mining engineers.
London had contrasted the concepts of the "Mother Woman" and the "Mate Woman" in The Kempton-Wace Letters. His pet name for Bess had been "mother-girl;" his pet name for Charmian was "mate-woman." Charmian's aunt and foster mother, a disciple of Victoria Woodhull
, had raised her without prudishness. Every biographer alludes to Charmian's uninhibited sexuality.
Joseph Noel calls the events from 1903 to 1905 "a domestic drama that would have intrigued the pen of an Ibsen.... London's had comedy relief in it and a sort of easy-going romance." In broad outline, London was restless in his marriage; sought extramarital sexual affairs; and found, in Charmian Kittredge, not only a sexually active and adventurous partner, but his future life-companion. They attempted to have children. One child died at birth, and another pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.
In 1906, London published in Collier's
magazine his eye-witness report of the San Francisco earthquake
.
In 1905, London purchased a 1000 acres (4 km²) ranch in Glen Ellen
, Sonoma County, California
, on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain
, for $26,450. He wrote that "Next to my wife, the ranch is the dearest thing in the world to me." He desperately wanted the ranch to become a successful business enterprise. Writing, always a commercial enterprise with London, now became even more a means to an end: "I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate." After 1910, his literary works were mostly potboiler
s, written out of the need to provide operating income for the ranch.
Stasz writes that London "had taken fully to heart the vision, expressed in his agrarian fiction, of the land as the closest earthly version of Eden … he educated himself through the study of agricultural manuals and scientific tomes. He conceived of a system of ranching that today would be praised for its ecological wisdom." He was proud to own the first concrete silo in California, a circular piggery that he designed. He hoped to adapt the wisdom of Asian sustainable agriculture
to the United States. He hired both Italian and Chinese stonemasons, whose distinctly different styles are obvious.
The ranch was an economic failure. Sympathetic observers such as Stasz treat his projects as potentially feasible, and ascribe their failure to bad luck or to being ahead of their time. Unsympathetic historians such as Kevin Starr
suggest that he was a bad manager, distracted by other concerns and impaired by his alcoholism
. Starr notes that London was absent from his ranch about six months a year between 1910 and 1916, and says, "He liked the show of managerial power, but not grinding attention to detail …. London's workers laughed at his efforts to play big-time rancher [and considered] the operation a rich man's hobby."
London spent $80,000 ($ in current value) to build a 15000 square feet (1,393.5 m²) stone mansion ("Wolf House") on the property. Just as the mansion was nearing completion, two weeks before the Londons planned to move in, it was destroyed by fire.
London's last visit to Hawaii, beginning in December 1915, lasted eight months. He met with Duke Kahanamoku
, Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana'ole
, Queen Lili‘uokalani and many others, before returning to his ranch in July 1916. He was suffering from kidney failure
, but he continued to work.
The ranch (abutting stone remnants of Wolf House) is now a National Historic Landmark
and is protected in Jack London State Historic Park
.
Many older sources describe London's death as a suicide, and some still do. This conjecture appears to be a rumor, or speculation based on incidents in his fiction writings. His death certificate gives the cause as uremia
, following acute renal colic
, a type of pain often described as "the worst pain [...] ever experienced", commonly caused by kidney stones. Uremia is also known as uremic poisoning.
London died November 22, 1916, in a sleeping porch
in a cottage on his ranch. He was in extreme pain and taking morphine
, and it is possible that a morphine overdose, accidental or deliberate, may have contributed to his death. The biographer Stasz writes, "Following London's death, for a number of reasons, a biographical myth developed in which he has been portrayed as an alcoholic womanizer who committed suicide. Recent scholarship based upon firsthand documents challenges this caricature."
London's fiction featured several suicides. In his autobiographical memoir John Barleycorn, he claims, as a youth, to have drunkenly stumbled overboard into the San Francisco Bay, "some maundering fancy of going out with the tide suddenly obsessed me". He said he drifted and nearly succeeded in drowning before sobering up and being rescued by fishermen. In the dénouement of The Little Lady of the Big House
, the heroine, confronted by the pain of a mortal gunshot wound, undergoes a physician-assisted suicide by morphine. Also, in "Martin Eden
", the principal protagonist, who shares certain characteristics with London himself, drowns himself.
London had been a robust man but had suffered several serious illnesses, including scurvy
in the Klondike. At the time of his death, he suffered from dysentery
and uremia
and late stage alcoholism. During travels on the Snark, he and Charmian may have picked up unspecified tropical infections. Most biographers, including Russ Kingman, now agree he died of uremia aggravated by an accidental morphine overdose.
London's ashes were buried, together with those of his second wife Charmian (who died in 1955), in Jack London State Historic Park
, in Glen Ellen, California
. The simple grave is marked only by a mossy boulder.
and used incidents from newspaper clippings as writing material.
Egerton R. Young claimed The Call of the Wild
was taken from his book My Dogs in the Northland. London acknowledged using it as a source and claimed to have written a letter to Young thanking him.
In July 1901, two pieces of fiction appeared within the same month: London's "Moon-Face
", in the San Francisco Argonaut, and Frank Norris
's "The Passing of Cock-eye Blacklock," in Century. Newspapers showed the similarities between the stories, which London said were "quite different in manner of treatment, [but] patently the same in foundation and motive." London explained both writers based their stories on the same newspaper account. A year later, it was discovered that Charles Forrest McLean had published a fictional story also based on the same incident.
In 1906, the New York World published "deadly parallel" columns showing eighteen passages from London's short story "Love of Life" side by side with similar passages from a nonfiction article by Augustus Biddle and J. K Macdonald, titled "Lost in the Land of the Midnight Sun." London noted the World did not accuse him of "plagiarism," but only of "identity of time and situation," to which he defiantly "pled guilty."
The most serious charge of plagiarism was based on London's "The Bishop's Vision", Chapter 7 of his The Iron Heel
. The chapter is nearly identical to an ironic essay that Frank Harris
published in 1901, titled "The Bishop of London and Public Morality." Harris was incensed and suggested he should receive 1/60th of the royalties from The Iron Heel, the disputed material constituting about that fraction of the whole novel. London insisted he had clipped a reprint of the article, which had appeared in an American newspaper, and believed it to be a genuine speech delivered by the Bishop of London.
. He ran unsuccessfully as the high-profile Socialist nominee for mayor of Oakland in 1901 (receiving 245 votes) and 1905 (improving to 981 votes), toured the country lecturing on socialism in 1906, and published collections of essays about socialism (The War of the Classes, 1905; Revolution, and other Essays, 1906). As London explained in his essay, "How I Became a Socialist", his views were influenced by his experience with people at the bottom of the social pit. His optimism and individualism faded, and he vowed never to do more hard work than necessary. He wrote that his individualism was hammered out of him, and he was politically reborn. He often closed his letters "Yours for the Revolution."
In his Glen Ellen ranch years, London felt some ambivalence toward socialism and complained about the "inefficient Italian labourers" in his employ. In 1916, he resigned from the Glen Ellen chapter of the Socialist Party, but stated emphatically he did so "because of its lack of fire and fight, and its loss of emphasis on the class struggle."
Stasz notes that "London regarded the Wobblies
as a welcome addition to the Socialist cause, although he never joined them in going so far as to recommend sabotage." Stasz mentions a personal meeting between London and Big Bill Haywood in 1912.
. Neither a theorist nor an intellectual socialist, London's socialism grew out of his life experience.
In his late (1913) book The Cruise of the Snark, London writes, without empathy, about appeals to him for membership of the Snark's crew from office workers and other "toilers" who longed for escape from the cities, and of being cheated by workmen.
In an unflattering portrait of London's ranch days, Kevin Starr (1973) refers to this period as "post-socialist" and says "… by 1911 … London was more bored by the class struggle than he cared to admit." Starr maintains London's socialism
", which he used as the title of a 1904 essay. This theme was also the subject of a story he wrote in 1910 called "The Unparalleled Invasion
". Presented as a historical essay narrating events between 1976 and 1987, the story describes a China
with an ever-increasing population taking over and colonizing its neighbors, with the intention of taking over the entire Earth. The western nations respond with biological warfare
and bombard China with dozens of the most infectious diseases.
Many of London's short stories are notable for their empathetic portrayal of Mexican ("The Mexican"), Asian ("The Chinago"), and Hawaiian ("Koolau the Leper") characters. London's war correspondence from the Russo-Japanese War
, as well as his unfinished novel Cherry, show he admired much about Japanese customs and capabilities.
In London's 1902 novel Daughter of the Snows, the character Frona Welse has a speech about Teutonic virtues in contrast to the characteristics of other "races". The scholar Andrew Furer, in a long essay exploring the complexity of London's views, says there is no doubt that Frona Welse is acting as a mouthpiece for London in this passage.:
London's 1904 essay, "The Yellow Peril", criticizes Asians. He admits, "[I]t must be taken into consideration that the above postulate is itself a product of Western race-egotism, urged by our belief in our own righteousness and fostered by a faith in ourselves which may be as erroneous as are most fond race fancies."
In "Koolau the Leper", London describes Koolau, who is a Hawaiian leper—and thus a very different sort of "superman" than Martin Eden—and who fights off an entire cavalry troop to elude capture, as "indomitable spiritually—a ... magnificent rebel".
An amateur boxer and avid boxing fan, London reported on the 1910 Johnson-Jeffries fight, in which the black boxer Jack Johnson
vanquished Jim Jeffries
, the "Great White Hope". In 1908, according to Furer, London praised Johnson highly, contrasting the black boxer's coolness and intellectual style, with the apelike appearance and fighting style of his white opponent, Tommy Burns: "what . . . [won] on Saturday was bigness, coolness, quickness, cleverness, and vast physical superiority... Because a white man wishes a white man to win, this should not prevent him from giving absolute credit to the best man, even when that best man was black. All hail to Johnson." Johnson was "superb. He was impregnable . . . as inaccessible as Mont Blanc."
Those who defend London against charges of racism cite the letter he wrote to the Japanese-American Commercial Weekly in 1913:
In Yukon
in 1996, after the City of Whitehorse
renamed two streets to honor London and Robert W. Service
, protests over London's racialist views forced
the city to change the name of "Jack London Boulevard" back to "Two-mile Hill".
London's "strength of utterance" is at its height in his stories, and they are painstakingly well-constructed. "To Build a Fire
" is the best known of all his stories. Set in the harsh Klondike, it recounts the haphazard trek of a new arrival who has ignored an old-timer's warning about the risks of traveling alone. Falling through the ice into a creek in seventy-five-below weather, the unnamed man is keenly aware that survival depends on his untested skills at quickly building a fire to dry his clothes and warm his extremities. After publishing a tame version of this story—with a sunny outcome—in The Youth's Companion in 1902, London offered a second, more severe take on the man's predicament in The Century Magazine
in 1908. Reading both provides an illustration of London's growth and maturation as a writer. As Labor (1994) observes: "To compare the two versions is itself an instructive lesson in what distinguished a great work of literary art from a good children's story."
Other stories from the Klondike period include: "All Gold Canyon", about a battle between a gold
prospector
and a claim jumper; "The Law of Life", about an aging American Indian man abandoned by his tribe and left to die; "Love of Life", about a trek by a prospector across the Canadian tundra; "To the Man on Trail," which tells the story of a prospector fleeing the Mounted Police in a sled race, and raises the question of the contrast between written law and morality; and "An Odyssey of the North," which raises questions of conditional morality, and paints a sympathetic portrait of a man of mixed White and Aleut ancestry.
London was a boxing
fan and an avid amateur boxer. "A Piece of Steak" is a tale about a match between older and younger boxers. It contrasts the differing experiences of youth and age but also raises the social question of the treatment of aging workers. "The Mexican" combines boxing with a social theme, as a young Mexican endures an unfair fight and ethnic prejudice in order to earn money with which to aid the revolution.
Numerous stories of London would today be classified as science fiction
. "The Unparalleled Invasion" describes germ warfare against China; "Goliah" revolves around an irresistible energy weapon; "The Shadow and the Flash" is a tale about two brothers who take different routes to achieving invisibility; "A Relic of the Pliocene" is a tall tale about an encounter of a modern-day man with a mammoth
. "The Red One
" is a late story from a period when London was intrigued by the theories of the psychiatrist
and writer Jung
. It tells of an island tribe held in thrall by an extraterrestrial object. His dystopia
n novel, The Iron Heel
, meets the contemporary definition of soft science fiction
.
Some nineteen original collections of short stories were published during London's brief life or shortly after his death. There have been numerous posthumous anthologies drawn from this pool of nineteen books. Many of these collections have been themed around the locales of the Klondike and the Pacific. A collection of Jack London's San Francisco Stories
was published in October 2010 by Sydney Samizdat Press.
, White Fang
, The Sea-Wolf
, The Iron Heel
, and Martin Eden
.
In a letter dated Dec 27, 1901, London's Macmillan publisher George Platt Brett, Sr.
said "he believed Jack's fiction represented 'the very best kind of work' done in America."
Critic Maxwell Geismar called The Call of the Wild
"a beautiful prose poem"; editor Franklin Walker said that it "belongs on a shelf with Walden
and Huckleberry Finn
"; and novelist E.L. Doctorow called it "a mordant parable … his masterpiece."
The historian Dale L. Walker commented:
Critics have said his novels are episodic and resemble a linked series of short stories. Walker writes:
Ambrose Bierce
said of The Sea-Wolf
that "the great thing—and it is among the greatest of things—is that tremendous creation, Wolf Larsen … the hewing out and setting up of such a figure is enough for a man to do in one lifetime." However, he noted, "The love element, with its absurd suppressions, and impossible proprieties, is awful."
The Iron Heel
is interesting as an example of a dystopian novel that anticipates and influenced George Orwell
's Nineteen Eighty-Four
. London's socialist politics are explicitly on display here.
, Irving Shepard, quoted a Jack London Credo in an introduction to a 1956 collection of London stories:
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.
The biographer Stasz notes that the passage "has many marks of London's style" but the only line that could be safely attributed to London was the first. The words Shepard quoted were from a story in the San Francisco Bulletin, December 2, 1916 by journalist Ernest J. Hopkins, who visited the ranch just weeks before London's death. Stasz notes "Even more so than today journalists' quotes were unreliable or even sheer inventions" and says no direct source in London's writings has been found.
In the short story "By The Turtles of Tasman", a character, defending her ne'er-do-well grasshopperish father to her antlike uncle, says: "… my father has been a king. He has lived …. Have you lived merely to live? Are you afraid to die? I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet. When you are dust, my father will be ashes."
This passage figured in a 1974 Supreme Court case, in which Justice Thurgood Marshall
quoted the passage in full and referred to it as "a well-known piece of trade union literature, generally attributed to author Jack London." A union newsletter had published a "list of scabs," which was granted to be factual and therefore not libelous, but then went on to quote the passage as the "definition of a scab." The case turned on the question of whether the "definition" was defamatory. The court ruled that "Jack London's... 'definition of a scab' is merely rhetorical hyperbole, a lusty and imaginative expression of the contempt felt by union members towards those who refuse to join," and as such was not libelous and was protected under the First Amendment.
The passage does not appear in the extensive collection of Jack London's writings at Sonoma State University's website. He once gave a speech entitled "The Scab" which he published in his book The War of the Classes, which opens
In 1913 and 1914, a number of newspapers printed a passage virtually identical to the first three sentences of the "scab" diatribe, except that the type of individual being vilified varies: God uses the awful substance to make, not a "scab," but a "knocker," or a "stool pigeon," or a "scandal monger."
A 1913 Fort Worth newspaper columnist quotes the "Rule Review" as saying "After God had finished making the rattlesnake, the toad and the vampire, He had some awful substance left, with which he made the knocker." A Macon, Georgia
paper published three full sentences of the definition of a "knocker."
A 1914 Duluth newspaper article, reporting on a trial, has the defense using this passage as a definition of a "stool pigeon."
In 1914 the New Age Magazine, quoted a paragraph from The Eastern Star, another Masonic publication. This passage, too, is virtually identical to the first three sentences of the "Scab" diatribe, except that it defines the "scandal monger."
's Church of Satan
claims that "Ragnar Redbeard", pseudonymous author of the 1896 book Might is Right
, was London. No London biographers mention any such possibility. Rodger Jacobs
published an essay ridiculing this theory, arguing that in 1896 London was unfamiliar with philosophers heavily cited by "Redbeard", such as Nietzsche, and had not even begun to develop his mature literary style.
Citations
Call Of The Wild
-Track listing:All songs written by Ted Nugent, except where indicated:#"Call of the Wild" – 4:51#"Sweet Revenge" – 4:06#"Pony Express" – 5:21#"Ain't It the Truth" – 4:57#"Renegade" – 3:33...
and White Fang
White Fang
White Fang is a novel by American author Jack London. First serialized in Outing magazine, it was published in 1906. The story takes place in Yukon Territory, Canada, during the Klondike Gold Rush at the end of the 19th-century, and details a wild wolfdog's journey to domestication...
, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush
Klondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...
, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire
To Build a Fire
"To Build a Fire" is a short story by American author Jack London. The famous version of this story was published in 1908. London published an earlier and radically different version in 1902 in which the protagonist survives his ordeal, and a comparison of the two provides a dramatic illustration...
", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf.
London was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers and wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics such as his dystopian novel, The Iron Heel
The Iron Heel
The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908.Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian", it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are...
and his non-fiction exposé, The People of the Abyss
The People of the Abyss
The People of the Abyss is a book by Jack London about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote this first-hand account by living in the East End for several months, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets...
.
Family
Jack London's mother, Flora Wellman, was the fifth and youngest child of Pennsylvania CanalPennsylvania Canal
Pennsylvania Canal refers generally to a complex system of canals, dams, locks, tow paths, aqueducts, and other infrastructure including, in some cases, railroads in Pennsylvania...
builder Marshall Wellman and his first wife, Eleanor Garrett Jones. Marshall Wellman was a great-great-great-grandson of Puritan Thomas Wellman
Thomas Wellman
Thomas Wellman was born in about 1615 in England and died at Lynn, Massachusetts on 10 October 1672. He was among the early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and progenitor of the Wellman family of New England...
. Flora left Ohio and moved to the Pacific coast when her father remarried after her mother died. In San Francisco, Flora worked as a music teacher and Spiritualist claiming to channel the spirit of an Indian
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
chief.
Biographer Clarice Stasz and others believe that London's father was astrologer
Astrologer
An astrologer practices one or more forms of astrology. Typically an astrologer draws a horoscope for the time of an event, such as a person's birth, and interprets celestial points and their placements at the time of the event to better understand someone, determine the auspiciousness of an...
William Chaney. Flora Wellman was living with Chaney in San Francisco when she became pregnant. Whether Wellman and Chaney were legally married is unknown. Most San Francisco civil records were destroyed by the extensive fires that followed the 1906 earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
; it is not known with certainty what name appeared on his birth certificate. Stasz notes that in his memoirs, Chaney refers to London's mother Flora Wellman as having been his "wife" and also cites an advertisement in which Flora called herself "Florence Wellman Chaney".
According to Flora Wellman's account, as recorded in the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
of June 4, 1875, Chaney demanded that she have an abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
. When she refused, he disclaimed responsibility for the child. In desperation, she shot herself. She was not seriously wounded, but she was temporarily deranged. After she gave birth, Flora turned the baby over to ex-slave Virginia Prentiss, who remained a major maternal figure throughout London's life. Late in 1876, Flora Wellman married John London, a partially disabled Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
veteran, and brought her baby John, later known as Jack, to live with the newly married couple. The family moved around the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
before settling in Oakland, where London completed grade school.
In 1897, when he was 21 and a student at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, London searched for and read the newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and the name of his biological father. He wrote to William Chaney, then living in Chicago. Chaney responded that he could not be London's father because he was impotent; he casually asserted that London's mother had relations with other men and averred that she had slandered him when she said he insisted on an abortion. He concluded that he was more to be pitied than London. London was devastated by his father's letter. In the months following, he quit school at Berkeley and went to the Klondike
Klondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...
.
Early life
London was born near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco. The house burned down in the fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake1906 San Francisco earthquake
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
; the California Historical Society
California Historical Society
The California Historical Society is California's official state historical society and is located in San Francisco, California at 678 Mission Street -History and collections:...
placed a plaque at the site in 1953. Though the family was working class, it was not as impoverished as London's later accounts claimed. London was essentially self-educated.
In 1885 London found and read Ouida
Ouida
Ouida was the pseudonym of the English novelist Maria Louise Ramé .-Biography:...
's long Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
novel Signa. He credited this as the seed of his literary success. In 1886 he went to the Oakland Public Library
Oakland Public Library
The Oakland Public Library is the public library in Oakland, California. Opened in 1878, the Oakland Public Library currently serves the city of Oakland, along with some neighboring smaller cities including Emeryville and Piedmont. The Oakland Public Library has the largest collection of any...
and found a sympathetic librarian, Ina Coolbrith
Ina Coolbrith
Ina Donna Coolbrith was an American poet, writer, librarian, and a prominent figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community...
, who encouraged his learning. (She later became California's first poet laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
and an important figure in the San Francisco literary community).
In 1889, London began working 12 to 18 hours a day at Hickmott's Cannery. Seeking a way out, he borrowed money from his black foster mother Virginia Prentiss, bought the sloop
Sloop
A sloop is a sail boat with a fore-and-aft rig and a single mast farther forward than the mast of a cutter....
Razzle-Dazzle from an oyster pirate
Oyster pirate
thumb|300px|Oyster pirates on the Chesapeake Bay in 1884Oyster pirate is a name given to persons who engage in the poaching of oysters. It was a term that became popular on both the west and east coasts of the United States in the nineteenth century....
named French Frank, and became an oyster pirate. In his memoir, John Barleycorn
John Barleycorn (novel)
John Barleycorn is an autobiographical novel by Jack London dealing with his enjoyment of and struggles with alcoholism. It was published in 1913. The title is taken from the British folksong "John Barleycorn".- Themes :...
, he claims to have stolen French Frank's mistress Mamie. After a few months, his sloop became damaged beyond repair. London became hired as a member of the California Fish Patrol.
In 1893, he signed on to the sealing schooner
Schooner
A schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....
Sophie Sutherland, bound for the coast of Japan. When he returned, the country was in the grip of the panic of '93
Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures...
and Oakland
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
was swept by labor unrest. After grueling jobs in a jute mill
Jute mill
Originally, a jute mill was a factory for processing jute. The first jute mill was established in Dundee, Scotland. The world's largest jute mill was the Adamjee Jute Mills at Narayanganj in Bangladesh. It closed all operations during 2002....
and a street-railway power plant, he joined Kelly's Army and began his career as a tramp. In 1894, he spent 30 days for vagrancy in the Erie County
Erie County, New York
Erie County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2010 census, the population was 919,040. The county seat is Buffalo. The county's name comes from Lake Erie, which in turn comes from the Erie tribe of American Indians who lived south and east of the lake before 1654.Erie...
Penitentiary at Buffalo
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
. In The Road, he wrote:
After many experiences as a hobo and a sailor, he returned to Oakland and attended Oakland High School
Oakland High School (California)
Oakland Senior High School is a public high school in California. Established in 1869, it is the oldest high school in Oakland, California and the sixth oldest high school in the state.-Background:...
. He contributed a number of articles to the high school's magazine, The Aegis. His first published work was "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan", an account of his sailing experiences.
As a schoolboy, London often studied at Heinold's First and Last Chance
Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon
Heinold's First and Last Chance is a waterfront saloon opened by John M. Heinold in 1883 on Jack London Square in Oakland, California, United States...
, a port side bar in Oakland. At 17, he confessed to the bar's owner, John Heinold, his desire to attend University and pursue a career as a writer. Heinold lent London tuition money to attend college.
London desperately wanted to attend the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. In 1896 after a summer of intense studying to pass certification exams, he was admitted. Financial circumstances forced him to leave in 1897 and he never graduated. No evidence suggests that London wrote for student publications while studying at Berkeley.
While at Berkeley, London continued to study and spend time at Heinold's saloon where he was introduced to the sailors and adventurers who would influence his writing. In his autobiographical novel, John Barleycorn
John Barleycorn (novel)
John Barleycorn is an autobiographical novel by Jack London dealing with his enjoyment of and struggles with alcoholism. It was published in 1913. The title is taken from the British folksong "John Barleycorn".- Themes :...
, London mentioned the pub's likeness seventeen times. Heinold's was the place where London met Alexander McLean, a captain known for his cruelty at sea, whom the protagonist in London's novel The Sea-Wolf
The Sea-Wolf
The Sea-Wolf is a 1904 psychological adventure novel by American novelist Jack London about a literary critic, survivor of an ocean collision who comes under the dominance of Wolf Larsen, the powerful and amoral sea captain who rescues him...
, Wolf Larsen, is based.
Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon is now unofficially named Jack London's Rendezvous in his honor.
Gold rush and first success
Klondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...
. This was the setting for some of his first successful stories. London's time in the Klondike
Klondike, Yukon
The Klondike is a region of the Yukon in northwest Canada, east of the Alaska border. It lies around the Klondike River, a small river that enters the Yukon from the east at Dawson....
, however, was detrimental to his health. Like so many other men who were malnourished in the goldfields, London developed scurvy
Scurvy
Scurvy is a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C, which is required for the synthesis of collagen in humans. The chemical name for vitamin C, ascorbic acid, is derived from the Latin name of scurvy, scorbutus, which also provides the adjective scorbutic...
. His gums became swollen, leading to the loss of his four front teeth. A constant gnawing pain affected his hip and leg muscles, and his face was stricken with marks that always reminded him of the struggles he faced in the Klondike. Father William Judge, "The Saint of Dawson
Dawson City, Yukon
The Town of the City of Dawson or Dawson City is a town in the Yukon, Canada.The population was 1,327 at the 2006 census. The area draws some 60,000 visitors each year...
," had a facility in Dawson that provided shelter, food and any available medicine to London and others. His struggles there inspired London's short story, "To Build a Fire
To Build a Fire
"To Build a Fire" is a short story by American author Jack London. The famous version of this story was published in 1908. London published an earlier and radically different version in 1902 in which the protagonist survives his ordeal, and a comparison of the two provides a dramatic illustration...
", which many critics assess as his best.
His landlords in Dawson were mining engineers Marshall Latham Bond
Marshall Latham Bond
Marshall Latham Bond was one of two brothers who were Jack London's landlords and among his employers during the autumn of 1897 and the spring of 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush. They were the owners of the dog that Jack London fictionalized as Buck....
and Louis Whitford Bond
Louis Whitford Bond
Louis Whitford Bond is remembered for having been one of two brothers who were the landlords and among the employers of Jack London during the Klondike Gold Rush. Their dog was the inspiration for his novel The Call of the Wild. Bond was born November 1, 1865, at Rushford, Allegany County, New...
, educated at Yale
YALE
RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
and Stanford. The brothers' father, Judge Hiram Bond
Judge Hiram Bond
Judge Hiram Bond was born in 1838 in Farmersville, Cattaraugus County, New York and died in Seattle in 1906. He was a corporate lawyer, investment banker and an investor in various businesses including gold mining. He was the son of Hiram Bond M.D. and Almeda Slusser and was married to Laura Ann...
, was a wealthy mining investor. The Bonds, especially Hiram, were active Republicans. Marshall Bond's diary mentions friendly sparring with London on political issues as a camp pastime.
London left Oakland with a social conscience and socialist leanings; he returned to become an activist for socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. He concluded that his only hope of escaping the work "trap" was to get an education and "sell his brains." He saw his writing as a business, his ticket out of poverty, and, he hoped, a means of beating the wealthy at their own game. On returning to California in 1898, London began working deliberately to get published, a struggle described in his novel, Martin Eden
Martin Eden
Martin Eden is a novel by American author Jack London, about a proletarian young autodidact struggling to become a writer. It was first serialized in the Pacific Monthly magazine from September 1908 to September 1909, and subsequently published in book form by Macmillan in September 1909.This book...
. His first published story was "To the Man On Trail", which has frequently been collected in anthologies. When The Overland Monthly offered him only five dollars for it—and was slow paying—London came close to abandoning his writing career. In his words, "literally and literarily I was saved" when The Black Cat accepted his story "A Thousand Deaths," and paid him $40—the "first money I ever received for a story."
London was fortunate in the timing of his writing career. He started just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines. This resulted in a boom in popular magazines aimed at a wide public, and a strong market for short fiction. In 1900, he made $2,500 in writing, about $ in current value. His career was well under way.
Among the works he sold to magazines was a short story known as either "Batard" or "Diable", in two editions of the same basic story. A cruel French Canadian brutalizes his dog. The dog retaliates and kills the man. London told some of his critics that man's actions are the main cause of the behavior of their animals, and he would show this in another short story.
In early 1903, London sold The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild is a novel by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a previously domesticated dog named Buck, whose primordial instincts return after a series of events leads to his serving as a sled dog in the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush, in which sled dogs...
to The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
for $750, and the book rights to Macmillan
Macmillan Publishers (United States)
Macmillan Publishers USA, also known as Macmillan Publishing, is a privately held American publishing company owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than 30 others....
for $2,000. Macmillan's promotional campaign propelled it to swift success.
While living at his rented villa on Lake Merritt
Lake Merritt
Lake Merritt is a large tidal lagoon that lies just east of downtown Oakland, California. It is surrounded by parkland and city neighborhoods. A popular 3.1 mile walking and jogging path runs along its perimeter...
in Oakland, London met poet George Sterling
George Sterling
George Sterling was an American poet based in California who, during his time, was celebrated in Northern California as one of the greatest American poets, although he never gained much fame in the rest of the United States.-Biography:Sterling was born in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, the...
and in time they became best friends. In 1902, Sterling helped London find a home closer to his own in nearby Piedmont
Piedmont, California
Piedmont is a small, affluent city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is surrounded by the city of Oakland. The population was 10,667 at the 2010 census. Piedmont was incorporated in 1907 and was developed significantly in the 1920s and 1930s...
. In his letters London addressed Sterling as "Greek," owing to his aquiline nose and classical profile, and signed them as "Wolf." London was later to depict Sterling as Russ Brissenden in his autobiographical novel Martin Eden (1910) and as Mark Hall in The Valley of the Moon (1913).
In later life London indulged his wide-ranging interests by accumulating a personal library of 15,000 volumes. He referred to his books as "the tools of my trade."
First marriage (1900–1904)
London married Elizabeth "Bessie" Maddern on April 7, 1900, the same day The Son of the Wolf was edited. Bess had been part of his circle of friends for a number of years. She was related to stage actresses Minnie Maddern Fiske and Emily Stevens. Stasz says, "Both acknowledged publicly that they were not marrying out of love, but from friendship and a belief that they would produce sturdy children.", Kingman says, "they were comfortable together... Jack had made it clear to Bessie that he did not love her, but that he liked her enough to make a successful marriage."During the marriage, London continued his friendship with Anna Strunsky
Anna Strunsky
Anna Strunsky Walling was an early 20th Century American author and proponent of socialism. Her work focused on social problems, literature, and the labor movement....
, co-authoring The Kempton-Wace Letters, an epistolary novel contrasting two philosophies of love. Anna, writing "Dane Kempton's" letters, arguing for a romantic view of marriage, while London, writing "Herbert Wace's" letters, argued for a scientific view, based on Darwinism and eugenics. In the novel, his fictional character contrasted two women he had known.
London's pet name for Bess was "Mother-Girl" and Bess's for London was "Daddy-Boy". Their first child, Joan, was born on January 15, 1901, and their second, Bessie (later called Becky), on October 20, 1902. Both children were born in Piedmont, California
Piedmont, California
Piedmont is a small, affluent city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is surrounded by the city of Oakland. The population was 10,667 at the 2010 census. Piedmont was incorporated in 1907 and was developed significantly in the 1920s and 1930s...
. Here London wrote one of his most celebrated works, The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild is a novel by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a previously domesticated dog named Buck, whose primordial instincts return after a series of events leads to his serving as a sled dog in the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush, in which sled dogs...
.
While London had pride in his children, the marriage was under strain. Kingman says that by 1903 they were close to separation as they were "extremely incompatible." Nevertheless, "Jack was still so kind and gentle with Bessie that when Cloudsley Johns was a house guest in February 1903 he didn't suspect a breakup of their marriage."
London reportedly complained to friends Joseph Noel and George Sterling that, "[Bessie] is devoted to purity. When I tell her morality is only evidence of low blood pressure, she hates me. She'd sell me and the children out for her damned purity. It's terrible. Every time I come back after being away from home for a night she won't let me be in the same room with her if she can help it." Stasz writes that these were "code words for [Bess's] fear that [Jack] was consorting with prostitutes and might bring home venereal disease."
On July 24, 1903, London told Bessie he was leaving and moved out. During 1904 London and Bess negotiated the terms of a divorce, and the decree was granted on November 11, 1904.
Bohemian Club
On August 18, 1904, London went with his close friend, the poet George Sterling, to "Summer High Jinks" at the Bohemian GroveBohemian Grove
Bohemian Grove is a campground located at 20601 Bohemian Avenue, in Monte Rio, California, belonging to a private San Francisco-based men's art club known as the Bohemian Club...
. London was elected to honorary membership in the Bohemian Club
Bohemian Club
The Bohemian Club is a private men's club in San Francisco, California, United States.Its clubhouse is located at 624 Taylor Street in San Francisco...
and took part in many activities. Other noted members of the Bohemian Club during this time included Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...
, Allan Dunn
J. Allan Dunn
Joseph Allan Dunn , best known as J. Allan Dunn, was one of the high-producing writers of the American pulp magazines. He published well over a thousand stories, novels, and serials from 1914–41. He first made a name for himself in Adventure...
, John Muir
John Muir
John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions...
, Gelett Burgess
Gelett Burgess
Frank Gelett Burgess was an artist, art critic, poet, author and humorist. An important figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary renaissance of the 1890s, particularly through his iconoclastic little magazine, The Lark, he is best known as a writer of nonsense verse...
, and Frank Norris
Frank Norris
Benjamin Franklin Norris, Jr. was an American novelist, during the Progressive Era, writing predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague , The Octopus: A Story of California , and The Pit .-Life:Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1870...
.
Beginning in December 1914, London worked on The Acorn Planter, A California Forest Play, to be performed as one of the annual Grove Plays, but it was never selected—it was described as too difficult to set to music. London published The Acorn Planter in 1916.
Second marriage
After divorcing Maddern, London married Charmian KittredgeCharmian London
Charmian Kittredge London was an American writer and second wife of Jack London.-Biography:...
in 1905. London was introduced to Kittredge by his MacMillan publisher, George Platt Brett, Sr.
George Platt Brett, Sr.
George Platt Brett, Sr. was a British-born chairman and publisher of the American division of Macmillan Publishing. He was best known for serving as publisher, friend, and mentor of American author Jack London. Under Brett's leadership, Macmillan became one of the largest publishers in America. ...
, while Kittredge served as Brett's secretary. Biographer Russ Kingman called Charmian "Jack's soul-mate, always at his side, and a perfect match." Their time together included numerous trips, including a 1907 cruise on the yacht Snark
The Cruise of the Snark
The Cruise of the Snark is a non-fictional, illustrated book by Jack London chronicling his sailing adventure in 1907 across the south Pacific in his ketch the Snark. Accompanying London on this voyage was his wife Charmian and a small crew...
to Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. Many of London's stories are based on his visits to Hawaii, the last one for 10 months beginning in December 1915.
The couple also visited Goldfield, Nevada
Goldfield, Nevada
Goldfield is an unincorporated community and the county seat of Esmeralda County, Nevada, United States, with a resident population of 440 at the 2000 census. It is located about southeast of Carson City, along U.S...
in 1907, where they were guests of the Bond brothers, London's Dawson City landlords. The Bond brothers were working in Nevada as mining engineers.
London had contrasted the concepts of the "Mother Woman" and the "Mate Woman" in The Kempton-Wace Letters. His pet name for Bess had been "mother-girl;" his pet name for Charmian was "mate-woman." Charmian's aunt and foster mother, a disciple of Victoria Woodhull
Victoria Woodhull
Victoria Claflin Woodhull was an American leader of the woman's suffrage movement, an advocate of free love; together with her sister, the first women to operate a brokerage in Wall Street; the first women to start a weekly newspaper; an activist for women's rights and labor reforms and, in 1872,...
, had raised her without prudishness. Every biographer alludes to Charmian's uninhibited sexuality.
Joseph Noel calls the events from 1903 to 1905 "a domestic drama that would have intrigued the pen of an Ibsen.... London's had comedy relief in it and a sort of easy-going romance." In broad outline, London was restless in his marriage; sought extramarital sexual affairs; and found, in Charmian Kittredge, not only a sexually active and adventurous partner, but his future life-companion. They attempted to have children. One child died at birth, and another pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.
In 1906, London published in Collier's
Collier's Weekly
Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....
magazine his eye-witness report of the San Francisco earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
.
Beauty Ranch (1905–1916)
Glen Ellen, California
Glen Ellen is a census-designated place in Sonoma Valley, Sonoma County, California, USA. The population was 784 at the 2010 census, down from 992 at the 2000 census. Glen Ellen is the location of Jack London State Historic Park , Sonoma Valley Regional Park, and a former home of Hunter S....
, Sonoma County, California
Sonoma County, California
Sonoma County, located on the northern coast of the U.S. state of California, is the largest and northernmost of the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties. Its population at the 2010 census was 483,878. Its largest city and county seat is Santa Rosa....
, on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain
Sonoma Mountain
Sonoma Mountain is a prominent landform within the Sonoma Mountains of southern Sonoma County, California. At elevation of , Sonoma Mountain offers expansive views of the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Sonoma Valley to the east...
, for $26,450. He wrote that "Next to my wife, the ranch is the dearest thing in the world to me." He desperately wanted the ranch to become a successful business enterprise. Writing, always a commercial enterprise with London, now became even more a means to an end: "I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate." After 1910, his literary works were mostly potboiler
Potboiler
Potboiler or pot-boiler is a term used to describe a poor quality novel, play, opera, or film, or other creative work that was created quickly to make money to pay for the creator's daily expenses . Authors who create potboiler novels or screenplays are sometimes called hack writers...
s, written out of the need to provide operating income for the ranch.
Sustainable agriculture
Sustainable agriculture is the practice of farming using principles of ecology, the study of relationships between organisms and their environment...
to the United States. He hired both Italian and Chinese stonemasons, whose distinctly different styles are obvious.
The ranch was an economic failure. Sympathetic observers such as Stasz treat his projects as potentially feasible, and ascribe their failure to bad luck or to being ahead of their time. Unsympathetic historians such as Kevin Starr
Kevin Starr
Kevin Starr is an American historian, best known for his multi-volume series on the history of California, collectively called "Americans and the California Dream."-Life:Kevin Starr was born in San Francisco, California....
suggest that he was a bad manager, distracted by other concerns and impaired by his alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
. Starr notes that London was absent from his ranch about six months a year between 1910 and 1916, and says, "He liked the show of managerial power, but not grinding attention to detail …. London's workers laughed at his efforts to play big-time rancher [and considered] the operation a rich man's hobby."
London spent $80,000 ($ in current value) to build a 15000 square feet (1,393.5 m²) stone mansion ("Wolf House") on the property. Just as the mansion was nearing completion, two weeks before the Londons planned to move in, it was destroyed by fire.
London's last visit to Hawaii, beginning in December 1915, lasted eight months. He met with Duke Kahanamoku
Duke Kahanamoku
Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku was a Hawaiian swimmer, actor, lawman, early beach volleyball player and businessman credited with spreading the sport of surfing. He was a five-time Olympic medalist in swimming.-Early years:The name "Duke" is not a title, but a given name...
, Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana'ole
Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana'ole
Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaole Piikoi was a prince of the reigning House of Kalākaua when the Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown by international businessmen in 1893...
, Queen Lili‘uokalani and many others, before returning to his ranch in July 1916. He was suffering from kidney failure
Renal failure
Renal failure or kidney failure describes a medical condition in which the kidneys fail to adequately filter toxins and waste products from the blood...
, but he continued to work.
The ranch (abutting stone remnants of Wolf House) is now a National Historic Landmark
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...
and is protected in Jack London State Historic Park
Jack London State Historic Park
Jack London State Historic Park, also known as Jack London Home and Ranch, is a California State Historic Park near Glen Ellen, California, United States, situated on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain...
.
Death
Uremia
Uremia or uraemia is a term used to loosely describe the illness accompanying kidney failure , in particular the nitrogenous waste products associated with the failure of this organ....
, following acute renal colic
Renal colic
Renal colic is a type of abdominal pain commonly caused by kidney stones.-Presentation:The pain typically begins in the abdomen and often radiates to the hypochondrium or the groin. The pain is often colicky due to ureteric peristalsis, but may be constant...
, a type of pain often described as "the worst pain [...] ever experienced", commonly caused by kidney stones. Uremia is also known as uremic poisoning.
London died November 22, 1916, in a sleeping porch
Sleeping porch
A sleeping porch is a deck or balcony that is screened and furnished for sleeping in the warmer months. Sleeping porches can be on ground level or on a higher storey and in either the front or back of a home...
in a cottage on his ranch. He was in extreme pain and taking morphine
Morphine
Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...
, and it is possible that a morphine overdose, accidental or deliberate, may have contributed to his death. The biographer Stasz writes, "Following London's death, for a number of reasons, a biographical myth developed in which he has been portrayed as an alcoholic womanizer who committed suicide. Recent scholarship based upon firsthand documents challenges this caricature."
London's fiction featured several suicides. In his autobiographical memoir John Barleycorn, he claims, as a youth, to have drunkenly stumbled overboard into the San Francisco Bay, "some maundering fancy of going out with the tide suddenly obsessed me". He said he drifted and nearly succeeded in drowning before sobering up and being rescued by fishermen. In the dénouement of The Little Lady of the Big House
The Little Lady of the Big House
The Little Lady of the Big House is a novel by American writer Jack London. Biographer Clarice Stasz states that it is "not autobiography," but speaks of his "frank borrowing from his life with Charmian" and says it is "psychologically valid as a mirror of events during [the] winter [of 1912–13]....
, the heroine, confronted by the pain of a mortal gunshot wound, undergoes a physician-assisted suicide by morphine. Also, in "Martin Eden
Martin Eden
Martin Eden is a novel by American author Jack London, about a proletarian young autodidact struggling to become a writer. It was first serialized in the Pacific Monthly magazine from September 1908 to September 1909, and subsequently published in book form by Macmillan in September 1909.This book...
", the principal protagonist, who shares certain characteristics with London himself, drowns himself.
London had been a robust man but had suffered several serious illnesses, including scurvy
Scurvy
Scurvy is a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C, which is required for the synthesis of collagen in humans. The chemical name for vitamin C, ascorbic acid, is derived from the Latin name of scurvy, scorbutus, which also provides the adjective scorbutic...
in the Klondike. At the time of his death, he suffered from dysentery
Dysentery
Dysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the faeces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.There are differences between dysentery and normal bloody diarrhoea...
and uremia
Uremia
Uremia or uraemia is a term used to loosely describe the illness accompanying kidney failure , in particular the nitrogenous waste products associated with the failure of this organ....
and late stage alcoholism. During travels on the Snark, he and Charmian may have picked up unspecified tropical infections. Most biographers, including Russ Kingman, now agree he died of uremia aggravated by an accidental morphine overdose.
London's ashes were buried, together with those of his second wife Charmian (who died in 1955), in Jack London State Historic Park
Jack London State Historic Park
Jack London State Historic Park, also known as Jack London Home and Ranch, is a California State Historic Park near Glen Ellen, California, United States, situated on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain...
, in Glen Ellen, California
Glen Ellen, California
Glen Ellen is a census-designated place in Sonoma Valley, Sonoma County, California, USA. The population was 784 at the 2010 census, down from 992 at the 2000 census. Glen Ellen is the location of Jack London State Historic Park , Sonoma Valley Regional Park, and a former home of Hunter S....
. The simple grave is marked only by a mossy boulder.
Accusations of plagiarism
London was vulnerable to accusations of plagiarism not only because he was such a conspicuous, prolific, and successful writer, but also because of his methods of working. He wrote in a letter to Elwyn Hoffman, "expression, you see—with me—is far easier than invention." He purchased plots and novels from the young Sinclair LewisSinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
and used incidents from newspaper clippings as writing material.
Egerton R. Young claimed The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild is a novel by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a previously domesticated dog named Buck, whose primordial instincts return after a series of events leads to his serving as a sled dog in the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush, in which sled dogs...
was taken from his book My Dogs in the Northland. London acknowledged using it as a source and claimed to have written a letter to Young thanking him.
In July 1901, two pieces of fiction appeared within the same month: London's "Moon-Face
Moon-Face
"Moon-Face" is a short story by Jack London, first published in 1902. It explores the subject of extreme antipathy.- Plot summary :The story follows the un-named protagonist and his irrational hatred of John Claverhouse, a man with a "moon-face"...
", in the San Francisco Argonaut, and Frank Norris
Frank Norris
Benjamin Franklin Norris, Jr. was an American novelist, during the Progressive Era, writing predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague , The Octopus: A Story of California , and The Pit .-Life:Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1870...
's "The Passing of Cock-eye Blacklock," in Century. Newspapers showed the similarities between the stories, which London said were "quite different in manner of treatment, [but] patently the same in foundation and motive." London explained both writers based their stories on the same newspaper account. A year later, it was discovered that Charles Forrest McLean had published a fictional story also based on the same incident.
In 1906, the New York World published "deadly parallel" columns showing eighteen passages from London's short story "Love of Life" side by side with similar passages from a nonfiction article by Augustus Biddle and J. K Macdonald, titled "Lost in the Land of the Midnight Sun." London noted the World did not accuse him of "plagiarism," but only of "identity of time and situation," to which he defiantly "pled guilty."
The most serious charge of plagiarism was based on London's "The Bishop's Vision", Chapter 7 of his The Iron Heel
The Iron Heel
The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908.Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian", it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are...
. The chapter is nearly identical to an ironic essay that Frank Harris
Frank Harris
Frank Harris was a Irish-born, naturalized-American author, editor, journalist and publisher, who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day...
published in 1901, titled "The Bishop of London and Public Morality." Harris was incensed and suggested he should receive 1/60th of the royalties from The Iron Heel, the disputed material constituting about that fraction of the whole novel. London insisted he had clipped a reprint of the article, which had appeared in an American newspaper, and believed it to be a genuine speech delivered by the Bishop of London.
Socialism
London joined the Socialist Labor Party in April 1896. In the same year, the San Francisco Chronicle published a story about the twenty-year-old London giving nightly speeches in Oakland's City Hall Park, an activity he was arrested for a year later. In 1901, he left the Socialist Labor Party and joined the new Socialist Party of AmericaSocialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
. He ran unsuccessfully as the high-profile Socialist nominee for mayor of Oakland in 1901 (receiving 245 votes) and 1905 (improving to 981 votes), toured the country lecturing on socialism in 1906, and published collections of essays about socialism (The War of the Classes, 1905; Revolution, and other Essays, 1906). As London explained in his essay, "How I Became a Socialist", his views were influenced by his experience with people at the bottom of the social pit. His optimism and individualism faded, and he vowed never to do more hard work than necessary. He wrote that his individualism was hammered out of him, and he was politically reborn. He often closed his letters "Yours for the Revolution."
In his Glen Ellen ranch years, London felt some ambivalence toward socialism and complained about the "inefficient Italian labourers" in his employ. In 1916, he resigned from the Glen Ellen chapter of the Socialist Party, but stated emphatically he did so "because of its lack of fire and fight, and its loss of emphasis on the class struggle."
Stasz notes that "London regarded the Wobblies
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
as a welcome addition to the Socialist cause, although he never joined them in going so far as to recommend sabotage." Stasz mentions a personal meeting between London and Big Bill Haywood in 1912.
Influence on writing
London wrote from a socialist viewpoint, which is evident in his novel The Iron HeelThe Iron Heel
The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908.Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian", it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are...
. Neither a theorist nor an intellectual socialist, London's socialism grew out of his life experience.
In his late (1913) book The Cruise of the Snark, London writes, without empathy, about appeals to him for membership of the Snark's crew from office workers and other "toilers" who longed for escape from the cities, and of being cheated by workmen.
In an unflattering portrait of London's ranch days, Kevin Starr (1973) refers to this period as "post-socialist" and says "… by 1911 … London was more bored by the class struggle than he cared to admit." Starr maintains London's socialism
Racial views
London shared common Californian concerns about Asian immigration and "the yellow perilYellow Peril
Yellow Peril was a colour metaphor for race that originated in the late nineteenth century with immigration of Chinese laborers to various Western countries, notably the United States, and later associated with the Japanese during the mid 20th century, due to Japanese military expansion.The term...
", which he used as the title of a 1904 essay. This theme was also the subject of a story he wrote in 1910 called "The Unparalleled Invasion
The Unparalleled Invasion
-Plot:"The Unparalleled Invasion" begins in 1910s China. Under the influence of Japan, China modernizes and has its own Meiji Reforms. In 1922, China breaks away from Japan and fights a brief war that culminates in the Chinese annexation of the Japanese possessions of Korea, Formosa, and Manchuria...
". Presented as a historical essay narrating events between 1976 and 1987, the story describes a China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
with an ever-increasing population taking over and colonizing its neighbors, with the intention of taking over the entire Earth. The western nations respond with biological warfare
Biological warfare
Biological warfare is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi with intent to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war...
and bombard China with dozens of the most infectious diseases.
Many of London's short stories are notable for their empathetic portrayal of Mexican ("The Mexican"), Asian ("The Chinago"), and Hawaiian ("Koolau the Leper") characters. London's war correspondence from the Russo-Japanese War
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...
, as well as his unfinished novel Cherry, show he admired much about Japanese customs and capabilities.
In London's 1902 novel Daughter of the Snows, the character Frona Welse has a speech about Teutonic virtues in contrast to the characteristics of other "races". The scholar Andrew Furer, in a long essay exploring the complexity of London's views, says there is no doubt that Frona Welse is acting as a mouthpiece for London in this passage.:
London's 1904 essay, "The Yellow Peril", criticizes Asians. He admits, "[I]t must be taken into consideration that the above postulate is itself a product of Western race-egotism, urged by our belief in our own righteousness and fostered by a faith in ourselves which may be as erroneous as are most fond race fancies."
In "Koolau the Leper", London describes Koolau, who is a Hawaiian leper—and thus a very different sort of "superman" than Martin Eden—and who fights off an entire cavalry troop to elude capture, as "indomitable spiritually—a ... magnificent rebel".
Jack Johnson (boxer)
John Arthur Johnson , nicknamed the “Galveston Giant,” was an American boxer. At the height of the Jim Crow era, Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion...
vanquished Jim Jeffries
James J. Jeffries
James Jackson Jeffries was a world heavyweight boxing champion.His greatest assets were his enormous strength and stamina. Using a technique taught to him by his trainer, former welterweight and middleweight champion Tommy Ryan, Jeffries fought out of a crouch with his left arm extended forward...
, the "Great White Hope". In 1908, according to Furer, London praised Johnson highly, contrasting the black boxer's coolness and intellectual style, with the apelike appearance and fighting style of his white opponent, Tommy Burns: "what . . . [won] on Saturday was bigness, coolness, quickness, cleverness, and vast physical superiority... Because a white man wishes a white man to win, this should not prevent him from giving absolute credit to the best man, even when that best man was black. All hail to Johnson." Johnson was "superb. He was impregnable . . . as inaccessible as Mont Blanc."
Those who defend London against charges of racism cite the letter he wrote to the Japanese-American Commercial Weekly in 1913:
In Yukon
Yukon
Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....
in 1996, after the City of Whitehorse
Whitehorse, Yukon
Whitehorse is Yukon's capital and largest city . It was incorporated in 1950 and is located at kilometre 1476 on the Alaska Highway in southern Yukon. Whitehorse's downtown and Riverdale areas occupy both shores of the Yukon River, which originates in British Columbia and meets the Bering Sea in...
renamed two streets to honor London and Robert W. Service
Robert W. Service
Robert William Service was a poet and writer who has often been called "the Bard of the Yukon".Service is best known for his poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", from his first book, Songs of a Sourdough...
, protests over London's racialist views forced
the city to change the name of "Jack London Boulevard" back to "Two-mile Hill".
Short stories
Western writer and historian Dale L. Walker writes:London's "strength of utterance" is at its height in his stories, and they are painstakingly well-constructed. "To Build a Fire
To Build a Fire
"To Build a Fire" is a short story by American author Jack London. The famous version of this story was published in 1908. London published an earlier and radically different version in 1902 in which the protagonist survives his ordeal, and a comparison of the two provides a dramatic illustration...
" is the best known of all his stories. Set in the harsh Klondike, it recounts the haphazard trek of a new arrival who has ignored an old-timer's warning about the risks of traveling alone. Falling through the ice into a creek in seventy-five-below weather, the unnamed man is keenly aware that survival depends on his untested skills at quickly building a fire to dry his clothes and warm his extremities. After publishing a tame version of this story—with a sunny outcome—in The Youth's Companion in 1902, London offered a second, more severe take on the man's predicament in The Century Magazine
The Century Magazine
The Century Magazine was first published in the United States in 1881 by The Century Company of New York City as a successor to Scribner's Monthly Magazine...
in 1908. Reading both provides an illustration of London's growth and maturation as a writer. As Labor (1994) observes: "To compare the two versions is itself an instructive lesson in what distinguished a great work of literary art from a good children's story."
Other stories from the Klondike period include: "All Gold Canyon", about a battle between a gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
prospector
Prospecting
Prospecting is the physical search for minerals, fossils, precious metals or mineral specimens, and is also known as fossicking.Prospecting is a small-scale form of mineral exploration which is an organised, large scale effort undertaken by mineral resource companies to find commercially viable ore...
and a claim jumper; "The Law of Life", about an aging American Indian man abandoned by his tribe and left to die; "Love of Life", about a trek by a prospector across the Canadian tundra; "To the Man on Trail," which tells the story of a prospector fleeing the Mounted Police in a sled race, and raises the question of the contrast between written law and morality; and "An Odyssey of the North," which raises questions of conditional morality, and paints a sympathetic portrait of a man of mixed White and Aleut ancestry.
London was a boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
fan and an avid amateur boxer. "A Piece of Steak" is a tale about a match between older and younger boxers. It contrasts the differing experiences of youth and age but also raises the social question of the treatment of aging workers. "The Mexican" combines boxing with a social theme, as a young Mexican endures an unfair fight and ethnic prejudice in order to earn money with which to aid the revolution.
Numerous stories of London would today be classified as science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
. "The Unparalleled Invasion" describes germ warfare against China; "Goliah" revolves around an irresistible energy weapon; "The Shadow and the Flash" is a tale about two brothers who take different routes to achieving invisibility; "A Relic of the Pliocene" is a tall tale about an encounter of a modern-day man with a mammoth
Mammoth
A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of Elephantidae, the family of elephants and mammoths, and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair...
. "The Red One
The Red One
"The Red One" is a short story by Jack London. It was first published in the October 1918 issue of Cosmopolitan, two years after London's death. The story was reprinted in the same year by MacMillan, in a collection of London's stories of the same name....
" is a late story from a period when London was intrigued by the theories of the psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...
and writer Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
. It tells of an island tribe held in thrall by an extraterrestrial object. His dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n novel, The Iron Heel
The Iron Heel
The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908.Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian", it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are...
, meets the contemporary definition of soft science fiction
Soft science fiction
Soft science fiction, or soft SF, like its complementary opposite hard science fiction, is a descriptive term that points to the role and nature of the science content in a science fiction story...
.
Some nineteen original collections of short stories were published during London's brief life or shortly after his death. There have been numerous posthumous anthologies drawn from this pool of nineteen books. Many of these collections have been themed around the locales of the Klondike and the Pacific. A collection of Jack London's San Francisco Stories
Jack London's San Francisco Stories
Jack London's San Francisco Stories is an anthology of Jack London short stories set in the San Francisco Bay Area. The book was edited by Matthew Asprey. The preface is a reprint of Rodger Jacobs' 2003 essay Ghost Land, a personal meditation on Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon in Oakland, CA...
was published in October 2010 by Sydney Samizdat Press.
Novels
London's most famous novels are The Call of the WildThe Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild is a novel by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a previously domesticated dog named Buck, whose primordial instincts return after a series of events leads to his serving as a sled dog in the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush, in which sled dogs...
, White Fang
White Fang
White Fang is a novel by American author Jack London. First serialized in Outing magazine, it was published in 1906. The story takes place in Yukon Territory, Canada, during the Klondike Gold Rush at the end of the 19th-century, and details a wild wolfdog's journey to domestication...
, The Sea-Wolf
The Sea-Wolf
The Sea-Wolf is a 1904 psychological adventure novel by American novelist Jack London about a literary critic, survivor of an ocean collision who comes under the dominance of Wolf Larsen, the powerful and amoral sea captain who rescues him...
, The Iron Heel
The Iron Heel
The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908.Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian", it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are...
, and Martin Eden
Martin Eden
Martin Eden is a novel by American author Jack London, about a proletarian young autodidact struggling to become a writer. It was first serialized in the Pacific Monthly magazine from September 1908 to September 1909, and subsequently published in book form by Macmillan in September 1909.This book...
.
In a letter dated Dec 27, 1901, London's Macmillan publisher George Platt Brett, Sr.
George Platt Brett, Sr.
George Platt Brett, Sr. was a British-born chairman and publisher of the American division of Macmillan Publishing. He was best known for serving as publisher, friend, and mentor of American author Jack London. Under Brett's leadership, Macmillan became one of the largest publishers in America. ...
said "he believed Jack's fiction represented 'the very best kind of work' done in America."
Critic Maxwell Geismar called The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild is a novel by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a previously domesticated dog named Buck, whose primordial instincts return after a series of events leads to his serving as a sled dog in the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush, in which sled dogs...
"a beautiful prose poem"; editor Franklin Walker said that it "belongs on a shelf with Walden
Walden
Walden is an American book written by noted Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau...
and Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by...
"; and novelist E.L. Doctorow called it "a mordant parable … his masterpiece."
The historian Dale L. Walker commented:
Critics have said his novels are episodic and resemble a linked series of short stories. Walker writes:
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...
said of The Sea-Wolf
The Sea-Wolf
The Sea-Wolf is a 1904 psychological adventure novel by American novelist Jack London about a literary critic, survivor of an ocean collision who comes under the dominance of Wolf Larsen, the powerful and amoral sea captain who rescues him...
that "the great thing—and it is among the greatest of things—is that tremendous creation, Wolf Larsen … the hewing out and setting up of such a figure is enough for a man to do in one lifetime." However, he noted, "The love element, with its absurd suppressions, and impossible proprieties, is awful."
The Iron Heel
The Iron Heel
The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908.Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian", it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are...
is interesting as an example of a dystopian novel that anticipates and influenced George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
. London's socialist politics are explicitly on display here.
Jack London Credo
London's literary executorLiterary executor
A literary executor is a person with decision-making power in respect of a literary estate. According to Wills, Administration and Taxation: a practical guide "A will may appoint different executors to deal with different parts of the estate...
, Irving Shepard, quoted a Jack London Credo in an introduction to a 1956 collection of London stories:
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.
The biographer Stasz notes that the passage "has many marks of London's style" but the only line that could be safely attributed to London was the first. The words Shepard quoted were from a story in the San Francisco Bulletin, December 2, 1916 by journalist Ernest J. Hopkins, who visited the ranch just weeks before London's death. Stasz notes "Even more so than today journalists' quotes were unreliable or even sheer inventions" and says no direct source in London's writings has been found.
In the short story "By The Turtles of Tasman", a character, defending her ne'er-do-well grasshopperish father to her antlike uncle, says: "… my father has been a king. He has lived …. Have you lived merely to live? Are you afraid to die? I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet. When you are dust, my father will be ashes."
The Scab
A short diatribe on "The Scab" is often quoted within the U.S. labor movement and frequently attributed to London. It opens:This passage figured in a 1974 Supreme Court case, in which Justice Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...
quoted the passage in full and referred to it as "a well-known piece of trade union literature, generally attributed to author Jack London." A union newsletter had published a "list of scabs," which was granted to be factual and therefore not libelous, but then went on to quote the passage as the "definition of a scab." The case turned on the question of whether the "definition" was defamatory. The court ruled that "Jack London's... 'definition of a scab' is merely rhetorical hyperbole, a lusty and imaginative expression of the contempt felt by union members towards those who refuse to join," and as such was not libelous and was protected under the First Amendment.
The passage does not appear in the extensive collection of Jack London's writings at Sonoma State University's website. He once gave a speech entitled "The Scab" which he published in his book The War of the Classes, which opens
In 1913 and 1914, a number of newspapers printed a passage virtually identical to the first three sentences of the "scab" diatribe, except that the type of individual being vilified varies: God uses the awful substance to make, not a "scab," but a "knocker," or a "stool pigeon," or a "scandal monger."
A 1913 Fort Worth newspaper columnist quotes the "Rule Review" as saying "After God had finished making the rattlesnake, the toad and the vampire, He had some awful substance left, with which he made the knocker." A Macon, Georgia
Macon, Georgia
Macon is a city located in central Georgia, US. Founded at the fall line of the Ocmulgee River, it is part of the Macon metropolitan area, and the county seat of Bibb County. A small portion of the city extends into Jones County. Macon is the biggest city in central Georgia...
paper published three full sentences of the definition of a "knocker."
A 1914 Duluth newspaper article, reporting on a trial, has the defense using this passage as a definition of a "stool pigeon."
In 1914 the New Age Magazine, quoted a paragraph from The Eastern Star, another Masonic publication. This passage, too, is virtually identical to the first three sentences of the "Scab" diatribe, except that it defines the "scandal monger."
Might is Right
Anton LaVeyAnton LaVey
Anton Szandor LaVey , born Howard Stanton Levey, was the founder of the Church of Satan as well as a writer, occultist, and musician...
's Church of Satan
Church of Satan
The Church of Satan is an organization dedicated to the acceptance of the carnal self, as articulated in The Satanic Bible, written in 1969 by Anton Szandor LaVey.- History :...
claims that "Ragnar Redbeard", pseudonymous author of the 1896 book Might is Right
Might Is Right
Might Is Right, or The Survival of the Fittest, is a book by pseudonymous author Ragnar Redbeard. It heavily advocates social Darwinism and was first published in 1890...
, was London. No London biographers mention any such possibility. Rodger Jacobs
Rodger Jacobs
Rodger Jacobs is an American journalist, writer, author, film producer, columnist, playwright, editor and screenwriter.Jacobs has been a journalist for publications such as Eye Magazine, Hustler and PopMatters...
published an essay ridiculing this theory, arguing that in 1896 London was unfamiliar with philosophers heavily cited by "Redbeard", such as Nietzsche, and had not even begun to develop his mature literary style.
Novels
- The Cruise of the Dazzler (1902)
- A Daughter of the SnowsA Daughter of the SnowsA Daughter of the Snows is Jack London's first novel. Set in the Yukon, it tells the story of Frona Welse, "a Stanford graduate and physical Valkyrie" who takes to the trail after upsetting her wealthy father's community by her forthright manner and befriending the town's prostitute...
(1902) - The Call of the WildThe Call of the WildThe Call of the Wild is a novel by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a previously domesticated dog named Buck, whose primordial instincts return after a series of events leads to his serving as a sled dog in the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush, in which sled dogs...
(1903) - The Kempton-Wace LettersThe Kempton-Wace LettersThe Kempton-Wace Letters was a 1903 epistolary novel by Jack London and Anna Strunsky. It was published anonymously.It is a discussion of the philosophy of love and sex, written in the form of a series of letters between two men, "Herbert Wace," a young scientist, and "Dane Kempton," an elderly poet...
(1903)
(published anonymously, co-authored with Anna StrunskyAnna StrunskyAnna Strunsky Walling was an early 20th Century American author and proponent of socialism. Her work focused on social problems, literature, and the labor movement....
) - The Sea-WolfThe Sea-WolfThe Sea-Wolf is a 1904 psychological adventure novel by American novelist Jack London about a literary critic, survivor of an ocean collision who comes under the dominance of Wolf Larsen, the powerful and amoral sea captain who rescues him...
(1904) - The Game (1905)
- White FangWhite FangWhite Fang is a novel by American author Jack London. First serialized in Outing magazine, it was published in 1906. The story takes place in Yukon Territory, Canada, during the Klondike Gold Rush at the end of the 19th-century, and details a wild wolfdog's journey to domestication...
(1906) - Before AdamBefore AdamBefore Adam is a novel by Jack London, serialized in 1906 and 1907 in Everybody's Magazine. It is the story of a boy who dreams he lives the life of an early hominid Australopithecine....
(1907) - The Iron HeelThe Iron HeelThe Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908.Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian", it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are...
(1908) - Martin EdenMartin EdenMartin Eden is a novel by American author Jack London, about a proletarian young autodidact struggling to become a writer. It was first serialized in the Pacific Monthly magazine from September 1908 to September 1909, and subsequently published in book form by Macmillan in September 1909.This book...
(1909) - Burning DaylightBurning DaylightBurning Daylight, Jack London's fictional novel published in 1910, was one of the best selling books of that year and it was his best selling book in his lifetime. The novel takes place in the Yukon Territory in 1893. The main character, nicknamed Burning Daylight was the most successful...
(1910) - Adventure (1911)
- The Scarlet PlagueThe Scarlet PlagueThe Scarlet Plague is a post-apocalyptic fiction novel written by Jack London and originally published in London Magazine in 1912.The story takes place in 2073, sixty years after an uncontrollable epidemic, the Red Death, has depopulated the planet...
(1912) - A Son of the SunA Son of the Sun (novel)A Son of the Sun is a 1912 novel by Jack London. It is set in the South Pacific at the beginning of the 20th century and consists of eight separate stories. David Grief is a forty year old English adventurer who came to the South seas years ago and became rich. As a businessman he owns offices in...
(1912) - The Abysmal Brute (1913)
- The Valley of the Moon (1913)
- The Mutiny of the ElsinoreThe Mutiny of the Elsinore (novel)The Mutiny of the Elsinore is a novel by the American writer Jack London first published in 1914. After death of the captain, the crew of a ship split between the two senior surviving mates. During the conflict, the narrator developes as a strong character, rather as in The Sea-Wolf...
(1914) - The Star RoverThe Star RoverThe Star Rover is a novel by American writer Jack London published in 1915 . It is a story of reincarnation....
(1915)
(published in England as The Jacket) - The Little Lady of the Big HouseThe Little Lady of the Big HouseThe Little Lady of the Big House is a novel by American writer Jack London. Biographer Clarice Stasz states that it is "not autobiography," but speaks of his "frank borrowing from his life with Charmian" and says it is "psychologically valid as a mirror of events during [the] winter [of 1912–13]....
(1916) - Jerry of the Islands (1917)
- Michael, Brother of Jerry (1917)
- Hearts of Three (1920)
(novelization of a script by Charles Goddard) - The Assassination Bureau, LtdThe Assassination Bureau, LtdThe Assassination Bureau, Ltd is a thriller novel, begun by Jack London and finished after his death by Robert L. Fish. It was published in 1963...
(1963)
(left half-finished, completed by Robert L. FishRobert L. FishRobert Lloyd Fish was an American writer of crime fiction. His first novel, The Fugitive, gained him the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award for best first novel in 1962, and his short story "Moonlight Gardener" was awarded the Edgar for best short story in 1972...
)
Short story collections
- Son of the Wolf (1900)
- Chris Farrington, Able Seaman (1901)
- The God of His Fathers & Other Stories (1901)
- Children of the Frost (1902)
- The Faith of Men and Other Stories (1904)
- Tales of the Fish Patrol (1906)
- Moon-Face and Other Stories (1906)
- Love of Life and Other Stories (1907)
- Lost FaceLost FaceLost Face is a collection of seven short stories by Jack London. It takes its named from the first short story in the book, about a European adventurer in the Yukon who outwits his Indian captors' plans to torture him. The book includes London's best-known short story, To Build a Fire....
(1910) - South Sea TalesSouth Sea Tales (1911)South Sea Tales is a collection of short stories written by Jack London. Most stories are set in island communities, like those of Hawaii, or are set aboard a ship.-List of Stories:*The House of Mapuhi*The Whale Tooth*Mauki*"Yah! Yah! Yah!"...
(1911) - When God Laughs and Other Stories (1911)
- The House of Pride & Other Tales of Hawaii (1912)
- Smoke Bellew (1912)
- A Son of the Sun (1912)
- The Night Born (1913)
- The Strength of the Strong (1911)
- The Turtles of Tasman (1916)
- The Human Drift (1917)
- The Red One (1918)
- On the Makaloa Mat (1919)
- Dutch Courage and Other Stories (1922)
Autobiographical memoirs
- The Road (1907)
- John BarleycornJohn Barleycorn (novel)John Barleycorn is an autobiographical novel by Jack London dealing with his enjoyment of and struggles with alcoholism. It was published in 1913. The title is taken from the British folksong "John Barleycorn".- Themes :...
(1913)
Non-fiction and essays
- The People of the AbyssThe People of the AbyssThe People of the Abyss is a book by Jack London about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote this first-hand account by living in the East End for several months, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets...
(1903) - How I Became a Socialist (1903)
- The War of the Classes (1905)
- Revolution, and other Essays (1910)
- The Cruise of the SnarkThe Cruise of the SnarkThe Cruise of the Snark is a non-fictional, illustrated book by Jack London chronicling his sailing adventure in 1907 across the south Pacific in his ketch the Snark. Accompanying London on this voyage was his wife Charmian and a small crew...
(1911)
Plays
- Theft (1910)
- Daughters of the Rich: A One Act Play (1915)
- The Acorn Planter: A California Forest Play (1916)
Short stories
- "Who Believes in Ghosts!" (1895)
- "To the Man on Trail" (1898)
- "In a Far Country" (1899)
- "The King of Mazy May" (1899)
- "The Rejuvenation of Major Rathbone" (1899)
- "The White Silence" (1899)
- "A Thousand DeathsA Thousand Deaths"A Thousand Deaths" is an 1899 short story by Jack London, and is notable as his first work to be published. It has as its theme the deliberate experimentally induced death and resuscitation/resurrection of the protagonist, by a mad scientist who uses multiple scientific methods for these experiments...
" (1899) - "An Odyssey of the North" (1900)
- "Even unto Death" (1900)
- "The Man with the Gash" (1900)
- "A Relic of the Pliocene" (1901)
- "The God of His Fathers" (1901)
- "The Law of Life" (1901)
- "The Minions of Midas" (1901)
- "In the Forests of the North" (1902)
- "The Story of Keesh"
- "Keesh, Son of Keesh" (1902)
- "Nam-Bok, the Unveracious"
- "The Men of Forty Mile"
- "Lost Face"
- "The Death of Ligoun" (1902)
- "Moon-FaceMoon-Face"Moon-Face" is a short story by Jack London, first published in 1902. It explores the subject of extreme antipathy.- Plot summary :The story follows the un-named protagonist and his irrational hatred of John Claverhouse, a man with a "moon-face"...
" (1902) - "Diable—A DogBâtardBâtard is a short story by Jack London, first published in 1902 under the title "Diable — A Dog" in The Cosmopolitan before being renamed to "Bâtard" in 1904. The story follows Black Leclère and Bâtard, two "devils", one in man and the other in a wolfdog...
" (1902), renamed BâtardBâtardBâtard is a short story by Jack London, first published in 1902 under the title "Diable — A Dog" in The Cosmopolitan before being renamed to "Bâtard" in 1904. The story follows Black Leclère and Bâtard, two "devils", one in man and the other in a wolfdog...
in 1904 - "To Build a FireTo Build a Fire"To Build a Fire" is a short story by American author Jack London. The famous version of this story was published in 1908. London published an earlier and radically different version in 1902 in which the protagonist survives his ordeal, and a comparison of the two provides a dramatic illustration...
" (1902, revised 1908) - "The League of the Old Men" (1902)
- "The Dominant Primordial Beast" (1903)
- "The One Thousand Dozen" (1903)
- "The Shadow and the Flash" (1903)
- "The Leopard Man's StoryThe Leopard Man's StoryThe Leopard Man's Story is a short mystery story by Jack London. It was first published in the August 1903 issue of Leslie's Weekly and, in 1906, included in Moon-Face and Other Stories.-Plot summary:...
" (1903) - "Negore the Coward" (1904)
- "All Gold Canyon" (1905)
- "Love of Life" (1905)
- "The Sun-Dog Trail" (1905)
- "The Apostate" (1906)
- "Make Westing" (1907)
- "The Terrible Solomons" (1910)
- "Yah! Yah! Yah!"
- "The House of Mapuhi"
- "The Inevitable White Man"
- "Mauki"
- "The Son of the Wolf"
- "Like Argus of the Ancient Times"
- "A Curious Fragment" (1908)
- "Aloha Oe" (1908)
- "That Spot" (1908)
- "The Enemy of All the World" (1908)
- "The Heathen" (1908)
- "Good-by, Jack" (1909)
- "Samuel" (1909)
- "South of the Slot" (1909)
- "The Chinago" (1909)
- "The Dream of Debs" (1909)
- "The Madness of John Harned" (1909)
- "The Seed of McCoy" (1909)
- "A Piece of SteakA Piece of Steak"A Piece of Steak" was a short story written by Jack London which first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in November of 1909. It took him about half a month to write it and earned him five hundred dollars.- Plot summary :...
" (1909) - "Goliath" (1910)
- "The Unparalleled Invasion" (1910)
- "Told in the Drooling Ward" (1910)
- "When the World was Young" (1910)
- "By the Turtles of Tasman" (1911)
- "The Mexican" (1911)
- "The Strength of the Strong" (1911)
- "War" (1911)
- "The Bones of Kahekili"
- "Shin-Bones"
- "The Scarlet Plague" (1912)
- "The Red OneThe Red One"The Red One" is a short story by Jack London. It was first published in the October 1918 issue of Cosmopolitan, two years after London's death. The story was reprinted in the same year by MacMillan, in a collection of London's stories of the same name....
" (1918)
Legacy and honors
- Mount London, also known as Boundary Peak 100, on the AlaskaAlaskaAlaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
-British ColumbiaBritish ColumbiaBritish Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
boundary, in the Boundary RangesBoundary RangesThe Boundary Ranges, also known in the singular and as the Alaska Boundary Range, are the largest and most northerly subrange of the Coast Mountains...
of the Coast MountainsCoast MountainsThe Coast Mountains are a major mountain range, in the Pacific Coast Ranges, of western North America, extending from southwestern Yukon through the Alaska Panhandle and virtually all of the Coast of British Columbia. They are so-named because of their proximity to the sea coast, and are often...
of British ColumbiaBritish ColumbiaBritish Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, is named for him. - Jack London SquareJack London SquareJack London Square is a popular tourist attraction on the waterfront of Oakland, California. Named after the author Jack London and owned by the Port of Oakland, it is the home of stores, restaurants, hotels, an Amtrak station, a ferry dock, the historic Saloon, the cabin Jack London lived in the...
on the waterfront of Oakland, CaliforniaOakland, CaliforniaOakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
was named for him. - He was honored by the United States Postal ServiceUnited States Postal ServiceThe United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
with a 25¢ Great Americans seriesGreat Americans seriesThe Great Americans series is a set of definitive stamps issued by the United States Postal Service, starting on December 27, 1980 with the 19¢ stamp depicting Sequoyah, and continuing through 2002, the final stamp being the 78¢ Alice Paul self-adhesive stamp. The series, noted for its simplicity...
postage stampPostage stampA postage stamp is a small piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are made from special paper, with a national designation and denomination on the face, and a gum adhesive on the reverse side...
. - Jack London Lake , a mountain lake located in the upper reaches of the Kolyma RiverKolyma RiverThe Kolyma River is a river in northeastern Siberia, whose basin covers parts of the Sakha Republic, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, and Magadan Oblast of Russia. Itrises in the mountains north of Okhotsk and Magadan, in the area of and...
in Yagodninsky district of Magadan OblastMagadan OblastMagadan Oblast is a federal subject of Russia in the Far Eastern Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Magadan....
.
Footnotes
NoteCitations
Further reading
- Starr, Kevin (1973) Americans and the California Dream 1850–1915. Oxford University Press. 1986 reprint: ISBN 0-19-504233-6
External links
- The Jack London Online Collection Site featuring information about Jack London's life and work, and a collection of his writings.
- The World of Jack London Biographical information and writings
- Jack London State Historic Park
- The Huntingon Library's Jack London Archive
- Guide to the Jack London Papers at The Bancroft Library
- Jack London Stories, Scanned short stories from original magazines, including the original artwork
- 5 short radio episodes from Jack London's writing at California Legacy ProjectCalifornia Legacy ProjectThe California Legacy Project began in 2000 as a project at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, CA and later partnered with Heyday Books in Berkeley, CA. The project uses a research team of SCU interns to create radio scripts for the radio anthology "Your California Legacy" on KAZU 90.3 FM,...
.