Jack London – American author, 1876-1916
Jack London’s life was filled with contradictions. He grew up with little money or education, but became a wealthy writer. He was a confirmed Socialist, but owned an expensive yacht and lavished money on a dream home. He wrote tales of survival, but committed suicide at age forty. And though he always claimed his adventure stories were potboilers, they remain his best-known works.
Jack London was born in San Francisco to an unconventional family. His father held a variety of unsteady jobs, and his mother was an astrologer. The author, who lived on a ranch during his early years, became a voracious reader, though his formal education was haphazard. Much of his youth was spent earning money by delivering newspapers and working at bowling alleys and factories. He left home at age fifteen to become a sailor and fisherman. Two years later, a seal-hunting voyage to Japan resulted in his first published work. The essay, like most of the author’s subsequent writing, drew on personal experiences.
Similarly, London’s adventures in the Klondike during the Alaskan gold rush provided background material for The Call of the Wild (1903), his most famous novel, which concerns Buck, a large, domesticated dog stolen from his California home and shipped to Alaska. Buck is harnessed, beaten, and forced to work as a sled dog in this wild, uncivilized environment. Relying on instinct, he slowly adapts to a savage new life of beatings, violent dogfights, and survival of the fittest.
By the novel’s conclusion, Buck’s association with humans has ended and he joins a pack of wild wolves. This compelling survival story has the raw power of a myth and can be read as an allegory. The book continues to enjoy great popularity in schools, although some readers may find the narrative overstated and occasionally slow.
Another London novel that continues to be read is White Fang (1906), which reverses the plot of The Call of the Wild by following a wolf dog from his wild existence in Alaska to life as a tamed pet in California. Both books contain strong scenes of adventure as animals fight nature and adapt to new surroundings.
A third survival story focuses on a human character facing a harrowing environment and is based on London’s experiences on a seal-hunting vessel. The Sea Wolf (1904) is the first-person story of Humphrey Van Weyden, who, despite his aristocratic background, is forced to become a cabin boy on The Ghost, a schooner that rescues him after a shipwreck. Humphrey must adapt to the brutal atmosphere of the ship, which is captained by the hated, domineering Wolf Larsen. Both men are strongly defined characters in this vivid, very readable novel,
Jack London remains best known to young readers for these three novels of adventure, although he also wrote acclaimed short stories, plays, nonfiction, and novels that espoused his political convictions, The author published over fifty books in a brief life that he ended early due to ill health, financial woes, and personal problems. Nevertheless, his legacy of stirring survival stories continues to entertain and inspire young readers.
R.D.S.
Source: Children’s Books and their Creators, Anita Silvey.
Jack London Selected Works
Novels
- The Cruise of the Dazzler (1902)
- A Daughter of the Snows (1902)
- The Call of the Wild (1903)
- The Kempton-Wace Letters (1903)
(published anonymously, co-authored with Anna Strunsky) - The Sea-Wolf (1904)
- The Game (1905)
- White Fang (1906)
- Before Adam (1907)
- The Iron Heel (1908)
- Martin Eden (1909)
- Burning Daylight (1910)
- Adventure (1911)
- The Scarlet Plague (1912)
- A Son of the Sun (1912)
- The Abysmal Brute (1913)
- The Valley of the Moon (1913)
- The Mutiny of the Elsinore (1914)
- The Star Rover (1915)
(published in England as The Jacket) - The Little Lady of the Big House (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, Ltd (1963)
(left half-finished, completed by Robert L. Fish)
