London, Jack (John Griffith London), 1876–1916, American author, b. San Francisco. The illegitimate son of an astrologer and a Welsh farm girl, he had a poverty-stricken childhood, brought up by his mother and her husband, John London. At 17, Jack London shipped as an able seaman to Japan and the Bering Sea. He was an oyster pirate, a gold-seeker in the first Klondike rush, a newspaper correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War, and in 1914 a war correspondent in Mexico. His stories, romantic adventures with realistic setting and character, began to appear first in the Overland Monthly. In 1900, The Son of the Wolf: Tales of the Far North was published. London's Klondike tales are exciting, vigorous, and brutal. The Call of the Wild (1903), about a tame dog who eventually leads a wolf pack, is one of the best animal stories ever written. Among his other works are The Sea-Wolf (1904), White Fang (1905), and Smoke Bellew (1912). Martin Eden (1909) and Burning Daylight (1910) are partly autobiographical. Although he was a highly paid writer of extremely popular fiction, London, a socialist, considered his social tracts—The People of the Abyss (1903) and The Iron Heel (1907)—as his most important work. The Cruise of the Snark (1911) is a vivid account of his interrupted voyage around the world in a 50-ft (15.2-m) ketch-rigged yacht, and John Barleycorn; or, Alcoholic Memoirs (1913) is autobiographical. Beset in his later years by alcoholism and financial difficulties, London died at the age of 40.

Bibliography

See Charmian London (his second wife), The Log of the Snark (1915), Our Hawaii (1917), and The Book of Jack London (2 vol., 1921); biographies by his daughter, Joan London (1969), and by J. Hedrick (1982), A. Sinclair (1983), C. Stasz (1988), and A. Kershaw (1998); studies by E. Labor (1977) and C. Watson (1982).

London, Jack

orig. John Griffith Chaney

Jack London writing The Sea Wolf, 1904.

(credit: Jack London State Historic Park)

(born Jan. 12, 1876, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.—died Nov. 22, 1916, Glen Ellen, Calif.) U.S. novelist and short-story writer. Born to poverty, the largely self-educated London became a sailor, hobo, Alaskan gold miner, and militant socialist. He gained a wide audience with his first book, The Son of the Wolf (1900), and the story “To Build a Fire” (1908). Thereafter he wrote steadily; his 50 books of fiction and nonfiction, including many romantic depictions of elemental struggles for survival as well as socialist tracts, include The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea-Wolf (1904), White Fang (1906), The Iron Heel (1907), Martin Eden (1909), and Burning Daylight (1910).

London, (John Griffith) Jack (1876–1916) writer; born in San Francisco. He is said to be the illegitimate son of William Henry Chaney, an astrologer; his mother, a spiritualist, married John London shortly after Jack was born. He had little formal schooling although he was an avid reader, and he spent much of his youth on the Oakland, Calif., waterfront, where he worked at a variety of jobs, some of which—such as oyster pirating—were illegal. In 1893 he worked on a ship that hunted seals from the Arctic to Japan. From 1894–95 he traveled as a hobo and oddjobber throughout Canada and the U.S.A.—at one point joining "Coxey's army" in its march to Washington—and was arrested for vagrancy in New York City. His experiences and reading (including the "Communist Manifesto") convinced him that he was a socialist, and on returning to California he briefly enrolled at the University of California and tried to sell his early writings. Beginning his restless wanderings again, he worked as a goldminer in the Klondike, Yukon Territory (1897–98). Returning to San Francisco, he began to sell stories, novels, and nonfiction, much of it drawing on his experiences in the North; the best known of these are The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea Wolf (1904), and White Fang (1906). In 1902 he visited the slums of London, and this inspired his book The People of the Abyss (1903). In 1904 he covered the Russo-Japanese War for the Hearst newspapers and in 1914 he covered the Mexican Revolution for Collier's. In 1907 he went to the South Pacific in a small sailboat, a trip described in The Cruise of the Snark (1907). His peripatetic life was the major source for his fiction, especially his thinly autobiographical novels, Martin Eden (1908–09) and John Barleycorn (1913). From 1905 on he was based on his large ranch in Glen Ellen, Calif., but he often traveled on the lecture circuit. His work earned him over a million dollars but he never seemed able to deal with his success; he promoted explicit socialist views in both fictional and nonfictional works, even while exalting the life of the primitive and self-sufficient. He was an alcoholic and by 1909 he was plagued by a variety of ailments; dependent on painkillers, he died from a (possibly self-inflicted) overdose of morphine.