Jack London

BORN: 1876, San Francisco, California

DIED: 1916, Glen Ellen, California
NATIONALITY: American
GENRE: Fiction, nonfiction
MAJOR WORKS:
The Call of the Wild (1903)
The Sea-Wolf (1904)
White Fang (1906)

Overview
Jack London is recognized as one of the most dynamic figures in American literature. London captured
the popular imagination worldwide through his personal exploits as well as through his literary efforts,
and his life as a sailor, social crusader, war correspondent, global traveler, and adventurer are legendary.
Yet, it is his work of adventure fiction and pioneering literature of social protest that have won him a
permanent place in American literature and distinguished him as one of the most widely translated
American authors.

Jack LondonLondon, Jack, photograph. The Library of Congress.

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Works in Biographical and Historical

Context
Unstable Beginnings John Griffith Chaney was born on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco, California.
He was the illegitimate child of Flora Wellman, a spiritualist, and her companion William Henry Chaney,
a professional astrologer who abandoned Flora when he learned she was pregnant. Flora married John
London in September of 1876, and renamed her child John Jack London. The couple moved to Oakland,
where John London struggled to make a living at various occupations, including farming and managing a
grocery store.
London's childhood was financially and emotionally unstable. The family moved frequently from one
rented house to another, and London compensated for his loneliness by finding companionship in books.
In 1885, London discovered that he could check out books from the Oakland Public Library, an important
discovery for a young man longing for escape. London later observed, It was this world of books, now
accessible, that practically gave me the basis of my education. Starting in grade school, London was
called upon to help provide for the family. At first the work was part-time: delivering newspapers, setting
pins in a bowling alley, sweeping saloon floors, and doing whatever odd jobs would bring a few extra
pennies into the family budget. When he finished grade school in 1889, London went to work full-time in

a cannery, spending as many as eighteen hours a day at ten cents an hour stuffing pickles into jars. It was
a traumatic ordeal, and it impressed upon him a lifelong loathing of manual labor.
An Unquenchable Thirst for Escape The pattern of London's life, reflected in much of his fiction, is a
series of escapesfirst from the drudgery of poverty, later from the monotony of work. At the age of
fifteen, he borrowed money to buy a sloop, a small sailing ship, and achieved notoriety on the Oakland
waterfront as Prince of the Oyster Pirates by raiding commercial oyster beds. After a year of this
dangerous occupation, London switched sides to become a member of the California Fish Patrol. His
maritime adventures continued into the next year when, a few days after his seventeenth birthday, he
shipped out as a seaman aboard a sealing schooner bound for the northwest Pacific. This seven-month
voyage provided the raw materials not only for his novel The Sea-Wolf but also for his first successful
literary effort: Story of a Typhoon off the Coast of Japan, a prize-winning sketch published in the San
Francisco Morning Call in 1893.
Subsequent experiences that winter working in a jute millwhich processed the material used to make
burlapand at the power plant of the Oakland Electric Railway intensified London's wanderlust. At first,
London rode with the West Coast contingent of Coxey's Industrial Army, a group of unemployed men who
went to Washington to petition Congress for relief following the Panic of 1893, a period of economic crisis
marked by massive bank failures. After deserting this army in Missouri, London hoboed northeast on his
own. Arrested for vagrancy in New York in June of 1894, he served thirty days in jail, then headed back
home to Oakland, determined to educate himself. London's tramping experiences, later recounted in The
Road (1907), were profoundly influential in shaping his career.
London's series of low-wage jobs quickly taught him the vices of American capitalism, which he viewed as
a demeaning caste system. When London was twenty, he joined the Socialist Labor Party and became a
political activist, achieving a certain notoriety as the Boy Socialist of Oakland. London's essay How I
Became a Socialist in War of the Classes: Socialist Essays, published in 1905, describes his conversion to
socialism as the result of intense reading and reflecting on his own personal experiences. London's life
experiences helped fuel his desire to be a writer. When he returned to Oakland, he studied intensely to
prepare himself for college, and published six stories, three descriptive sketches, and one essay in his
school's student literary magazine. After three semesters in high school, London successfully passed the
entrance examinations for the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied for one semester.
Because of a lack of funds, however, he had to leave. London tried unsuccessfully to earn money by
writing but was forced to get a job as a common laborer once again. His next escape came in July of 1897,
when London sailed for Alaska with his brother-in-law to take part in the Klondike Gold Rush.
Finding His Voice, Beginning His Career London's experience in the Klondike was the turning
point in his career. It was in the Klondike that I found myself, London later confessed. Forced by an
attack of scurvy to return home the next summer, he took back no gold, but a wealth of experiences that
his artistic genius then translated into fiction. The year 1898 was for London a time of furiously intense
work and a remarkable outpouring of creative energy, subsequently documented in his autobiographical
novel Martin Eden (1909). By January 1899, he had broken into print in the Overland Monthly; within a
year his work was appearing in the most prestigious magazines in the country; and in the spring of 1900
his first book, The Son of the Wolf: Tales of the Far North was published by a highly respected Boston
publishing house. The same year, London also married Bessie Maddern. London and Bessie became the
parents of two daughters: Joan, born in 1901, and Bess Becky, in 1902.
The Son of the Wolf was an immediate success, and became the first volume of London's Northland Saga,
a sprawling literary achievement. The Saga included seventy-eight short stories, four novelsincluding
The Call of the Wild and White Fang, a half-dozen nonfiction essays, and Page 1007 | Top of Articleone
play. Written during the winter of 19021903, The Call of the Wild has become one of the great books in
world literature, published in hundreds of editions in more than fifty languages. The novel is the heroic
journey of Buck, who is transformed from a ranch pet into the Ghost Dog of the Wilderness. An adventure
novel, The Call of the Wild is also a sophisticated allegory of human nature.
While London had found the key to literary success in his Northland Saga, he was still searching for the
key to domestic happiness during the years between the publication of The Son of the Wolf and The Call

of the Wild. During this time, London went to England, presumably en route to South Africa to report on
the aftermath of the Boer War for the American Press Association. That assignment was canceled,
however, and he reported, instead, on the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution that he found in the
London slums. The result was The People of the Abyss (1903), a pioneering work of creative nonfiction
that championed social-justice issues. London returned home from Europe in November 1902, shortly
after the birth of his second daughter, hoping to make his marriage work. But despite his efforts it was
increasingly obvious that he and Bessie could not live happily together. In May 1903 he took his family to
Glen Ellen, California, and that summer he fell in love with Clara Charmian Kittredge. He left Bessie
shortly afterward, and moved into an Oakland apartment, where he completed his novel The Sea Wolf,
which became one of his most successful books.
A Life of Adventure and Writing In the spring of 1905, after his unsuccessful campaign for mayor of
Oakland on the Socialist ticket, he took up permanent residence with Charmian Kittredge and purchased
Hill Ranch, near Glen Ellen. Now happily engaged, they would be married in 1905 as soon as London's
divorce became final. During those months he produced some of his best fiction, including what many
critics consider the most artistically successful of his longer novels, White Fang, a gripping tale of survival
and the power of the environment.
London then embarked on the most publicized of all of his adventures: an attempt to circumnavigate the
globe on his own boat, the Snark. London carefully planned the construction of the boat, but due in part
to the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, it was so poorly built it required extensive repair when it reached
Hawaii in 1907. London, suffering from several ailments, ultimately called off the voyage in Australia. The
journey became the inspiration for London's nonfiction book, The Cruise of the Snark (1911). After this
disastrous journey, London focused on building up his ranch in Sonoma Valley, publishing several works
that reflected his agrarian interests, including Burning Daylight (1911). His interest in socialism also
began to wane, and he envisioned less violent solutions to modern man's woes than social revolution.
In the last few years of his life, London suffered from severe health problems and sailed to Hawaii twice in
1915, in the hope of regaining his strength. That same year he published The Star Rover, his last great
work. It is a science-fiction novel concerning the out-of-body experiences of an intelligent man and
convicted murderer, Professor Darrell Standing, who is straitjacketed in San Quentin prison. London died
at the age of forty on November 22, 1916, probably from kidney failure. He had achieved an astounding
career in just fifteen years as a writer and public figure, becoming the first American author to earn one
million dollars from his writing. More importantly, he had become a true literary craftsman, and the bestselling American writer in the world.

Works in Literary Context

Naturalism London's works are an example of American literary naturalism. The naturalist movement
began in the late nineteenth century as an extension of realism, which was concerned with depicting
contemporary life and behavior in an authentic, realistic way. By contrast, naturalism was concerned with
exploring the social and environmental forces that determined individuals' lives and their behavior. Many
naturalistic works focused on exposing the social and environmental inequities that contributed to the
harshness of people's lives. In much of London's work, an individual leaves behind the problems of urban
life to determine his worth in a natural or primitive environment. Although its hero is a dog, The Call of
the Wild epitomizes much of the subject matter and style of naturalistic fiction due to its storyline about a
domestic dog who must adapt to conditions of the wild.
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Adventure Writing London's work was enormously influential on the expansion of the American
tradition of adventure writing, a literary genre that crosses over both fiction and nonfiction. London's
contribution to the genre took the form of both short stories, many of which were published in
magazines and journals, as well as novels. The subject of adventure writing generally involves richly
drawn characters who embark on travel or journeys and are often pitted against nature. London's
short story of survival in the wilderness, To Build a Fire (1908), is often considered one of the greatest
adventure stories ever written.

Works in Critical Context

Although London was an enormously popular and commercially successful writer, his reputation as an
author was negligible among critics and members of the literary establishment for many years. As a
result, many of his works, including The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf, and White Fang were
considered merely works of adventure fiction and relegated to young-adult fiction shelves until the
latter half of the twentieth century. Since then, London's work has steadily gained critical recognition
for its literary artistry and philosophical depth. Critic Earle Labor concludes that London's greatest
achievement is his artistic modulation of universal dreams.
The Call of the Wild Widely considered a lively, engaging story about the relationship and struggle
between civilization and barbarism, The Call of the Wild is widely recognized as one of London's best
works. Although critics have disagreed about how consciously London applied allegory to his very
literal story of Buck, most agree that The Call of the Wild is both fascinating as a type of autobiography
and as a compelling articulation of London's exploration of human instincts. Critic and novelist
Abraham Rothberg writes, A study of atavism, or reversion to type, it was also an allegory of man's
conditions in the society of London's time as well as a revelation of the deepest emotions London felt
about himself and that society. Critic Jonathan H. Spinner further appraises the social and symbolic
importance of violence in the novel, concluding, What is presented by London is a syllabus for the
twentieth century, a syllabus that states that the way to solve the dilemma of existence in a harsh world
is to accept the glory in the cleansing fire of violence.
The Sea-Wolf The Sea-Wolf is a novel that charts the transformation of an educated, literary man
named Humphrey van Weydon into a rugged individualist who is capable of self-sufficiency aboard a
sailing schooner captained by a the colorful character of Wolf Larsen. Critics agree that the novel is a
lively engagement with many of the social issues that preoccupied London. James Dickey writes that
London created his most memorable human character, Wolf Larsen, in The Sea-Wolf. Larsen
exemplifies all of the characteristics London admired most: courage, resourcefulness, ruthlessness, and
above all, a strength of will.