JACK LONDON (1874)

Novelist and shortstory writer whose characteristic works deal romantically with elemental struggles for survival; he is one of the most extensively translated of U.S. authors.

Deserted by his father, a roving astrologer, he was raised in Oakland, California, by his spiritualist mother and his stepfather whose surname London he took.

At 14 he quit school to escape poverty and gain adventure.
He explored San Francisco Bay in his sloop alternately stealing oysters or working for the government fish patrol.
He went to Japan as a sailor and saw much of the U.S. as a hobo riding freight trains and as a member of Kelly´s industrial army (one of the many protest armies of unemployed born of the panic of 1893).
Observation of depression conditions fortified by a prison term for vagrancy turneds him in 1894 into a militant Marxist Socialist.
Rebelling against becoming a "work beast" London educated himself at public libraries where he studied usually in popularized forms the writings of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche and arrived at a philosphical amalgam of socialism and belief in the superiority of the white race.

At 19 he crammed a four-year high school course into one year.
He entered the University of California at Berkeley but after one year abandoned education to seek a fortune in the Klondike during the gold rush of 1897. Returning the next year still poor and unable to find work he decided to earn a living as a writer.

Jack London trained for his literary career with the courage and stamina of an athlete.
He studied "literature" magazines, then set himself a gruelling daily schedule of producing sonnets, ballads, jokes, anecdotes, adventure stories, or horror stories, steaddily increasing his output. The optimist and energy with which he attacked his task are best conveyed in his autobiographical novel Martin Eden (1909) perhaps his most enduring work.

Within two years stories of his Alaskan adventures though often crude began to win acceptance for their fresh subject matter and virile force. His first book The Son of the Wolf (1900) gained a wide audience.

During the remainder of his life he produced steadily completing 50 books in 17 years. Although he became the highest paid writer in the U.S., his earnings never matched his expenditures and he was never freed of the urgency of writing for money.

He sailed a ketch to the South Pacific telling of his adventures in The Cruise of the Snark (1911).

In 1910 he settled on a ranch near Glen Ellen, California, where he built his grandiose Wolf House. He protested his socialist beliefs almost to the end of his life and was a hero among revolutionaries long after he had lost interest in the class struggle. His death from an overdose of drugs is usually regarded as a suicide.

Jack London´s hastily written output is of uneven quality. His Alaskan stories Call of the Wild (1903), White Fang (1906) and Burning Daylight (1910) in which he dramatized in turn atavism, adaptability and the appeal of the wilderness are outstanding. In addition to Martin Eden he wrote two other autobiographical novels of considerable interest: The Road (1907) and John Barleycorn (1913). Other important works are The Sea Wolf (1904) which features a Nietzschean superman hero and The Iron Heel (1907) a fantasy of the future that is a terrifying anticipation of fascism.

His reputation declined in the U.S. in the 1920s when a brilliant new generation of postwar writers made the prewar writers seem lacking in sophistication but his popularity has remained high throughout the world, especially in the Soviet Union where a commemorative edition of his works published in 1956 was reported to be sold out in five hours.

Biographies of London include The Book of Jack London (1921) by Charmian London (his wife), Sailor on Horseback (1938) by Irving Stone, and Jack London and His Times by Joan London (a daughter).