The Works of Jack London
In , Sterling helped London find a home closer to his own in nearby Piedmont. In his letters London addressed Sterling as "Greek", owing to Sterling's aquiline nose and classical profile, and he signed them as "Wolf". In later life London indulged his wide-ranging interests by accumulating a personal library of 15, volumes. He referred to his books as "the tools of my trade".
Bess had been part of his circle of friends for a number of years. 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. Jack had made it clear to Bessie that he did not love her, but that he liked her enough to make a successful marriage.
Bessie, who tutored at Anderson's University Academy in Alameda California, tutored Jack in preparation for his entrance exams for the University of California at Berkeley in Jacobs was killed aboard the USAT Scandia in , but Jack and Bessie continued their friendship, which included taking photos and developing the film together. 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. 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 strained. Kingman says that by , the couple were close to separation as they were "extremely incompatible".
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.
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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, , London told Bessie he was leaving and moved out.
During , London and Bess negotiated the terms of a divorce, and the decree was granted on November 11, He was arrested by Japanese authorities in Shimonoseki , but released through the intervention of American ambassador Lloyd Griscom. After travelling to Korea , he was again arrested by Japanese authorities for straying too close to the border with Manchuria without official permission, and was sent back to Seoul. Released again, London was permitted to travel with the Imperial Japanese Army to the border, and to observe the Battle of the Yalu.
London asked William Randolph Hearst , the owner of the San Francisco Examiner , to be allowed to transfer to the Imperial Russian Army , where he felt that restrictions on his reporting and his movements would be less severe. However, before this could be arranged, he was arrested for a third time in four months, this time for assaulting his Japanese assistants, whom he accused of stealing the fodder for his horse.
Released through the personal intervention of President Theodore Roosevelt , London departed the front in June London was elected to honorary membership in the Bohemian Club and took part in many activities. It was described as too difficult to set to music.
After divorcing Maddern, London married Charmian Kittredge in London was injured when he fell from a buggy, and Netta arranged for Charmian to care for him. The two developed a friendship, as Charmian, Netta, her husband Roscoe, and London were politically aligned with socialist causes. At some point the relationship became romantic, and Jack divorced his wife to marry Charmian, who was five years his senior [39].
Biographer Russ Kingman called Charmian "Jack's soul-mate, always at his side, and a perfect match. The couple also visited Goldfield , Nevada, in , where they were guests of the Bond brothers, London's Dawson City landlords. The Bond brothers were working in Nevada as mining engineers. Joseph Noel calls the events from to "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. They attempted to have children; one child died at birth, and another pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.
In , London published in Collier's magazine his eye-witness report of the San Francisco earthquake. In , London purchased a 1, acres 4. Writing, always a commercial enterprise with London, now became even more a means to an end: I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate. 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 conceived of a system of ranching that today would be praised for its ecological wisdom.
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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 and , 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. 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, [49] beginning in December , lasted eight months. London witnessed animal cruelty in the training of circus animals, and his subsequent novels Jerry of the Islands and Michael, Brother of Jerry included a foreword entreating the public to become more informed about this practice.
London died November 22, , in a sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch. London had been a robust man but had suffered several serious illnesses, including scurvy in the Klondike. London's ashes were buried on his property not far from the Wolf House. London's funeral took place on November 26, , attended only by close friends, relatives, and workers of the property.
In accordance with his wishes, he was cremated and buried next to some pioneer children, under a rock that belonged to the Wolf House. After Charmian's death in , she was also cremated and then buried with her husband in the same simple spot that her husband chose. The grave is marked by a mossy boulder.
Because he was using morphine, many older sources describe London's death as a suicide, and some still do. His death certificate [57] gives the cause as uremia , following acute renal colic. 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.
Also, in Martin Eden , the principal protagonist, who shares certain characteristics with London, drowns himself. London was vulnerable to accusations of plagiarism, both because he was such a conspicuous, prolific, and successful writer and because of his methods of working. He wrote in a letter to Elwyn Hoffman, "expression, you see—with me—is far easier than invention. In July , two pieces of fiction appeared within the same month: 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.
A year later, it was discovered that Charles Forrest McLean had published a fictional story also based on the same incident. In , 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. The chapter is nearly identical to an ironic essay that Frank Harris published in , titled "The Bishop of London and Public Morality". 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.
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London was an atheist. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed. London wrote from a socialist viewpoint, which is evident in his novel The Iron Heel. Neither a theorist nor an intellectual socialist, London's socialism grew out of his life experience.
As London explained in his essay, "How I Became a Socialist", [69] 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 physical 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. London joined the Socialist Labor Party in April 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.
He ran unsuccessfully as the high-profile Socialist candidate for mayor of Oakland in receiving votes and improving to votes , toured the country lecturing on socialism in , and published two collections of essays about socialism: The War of the Classes and Revolution, and other Essays 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.
In his late book The Cruise of the Snark , London writes 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 his Glen Ellen ranch years, London felt some ambivalence toward socialism and complained about the "inefficient Italian labourers" in his employ. London was more bored by the class struggle than he cared to admit.
London shared common concerns among European Americans in California about Asian immigration , described as " the yellow peril "; he used the latter term as the title of a essay. Presented as an historical essay set in the future, the story narrates events between and , in which China, with an ever-increasing population, is 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.
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 "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 This character is based on Hawaiian leper Kaluaikoolau , who in revolted and resisted capture from forces of the Provisional Government of Hawaii in the Kalalau Valley.
An amateur boxer and avid boxing fan, London reported on the Johnson—Jeffries fight, in which the black boxer Jack Johnson vanquished Jim Jeffries , known as the "Great White Hope". In , London had reported on an earlier fight of Johnson's, contrasting the black boxer's coolness and intellectual style, with the apelike appearance and fighting style of his Canadian opponent, Tommy Burns ,. 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. Those who defend London against charges of racism cite the letter he wrote to the Japanese-American Commercial Weekly in In reply to yours of August 16, First of all, I should say by stopping the stupid newspaper from always fomenting race prejudice.
This of course, being impossible, I would say, next, by educating the people of Japan so that they will be too intelligently tolerant to respond to any call to race prejudice. And, finally, by realizing, in industry and government, of socialism—which last word is merely a word that stands for the actual application of in the affairs of men of the theory of the Brotherhood of Man. In the meantime the nations and races are only unruly boys who have not yet grown to the stature of men.
The same year he was married, London's first book was published, The Son of the Wolf London served several stints as journalist; during the Russo-Japanese war in London was war correspondent for the San Francisco Examiner , for Collier's in reported on the earthquake in San Francisco, and travelled to Mexico to report on the revolution. While he had travelled much in his life, London was also looking to put down roots. He loved horseback riding and life on the ranch that he knew so well from his childhood.
In he purchased land in Glen Ellen in the Sonoma County Valley of California which would eventually be part of his fourteen-hundred acre "Beauty Ranch". His sister Eliza would become his ranch superintendent. The Faith of Men was followed by The Sea Wolf which inspired the first feature-length film to be produced in the United States. On 19 November London married Charmian Kittredge with whom he would have a daughter, Joy, who died in infancy.
London had been planning his next trip for some time, and on his schooner Snark left for Hawaii in Back home in , London continued to add to his ranch, buying land and starting construction of "Wolf House" which was destroyed by fire in His semi-autobiographical Martin Eden was published in It was in that the Londons set sail again on the Dirigo bound for Cape Horn.
At the age of forty, Jack London died at his ranch cottage on 22 November Charmian continued to live at the ranch, and devoted herself to its preservation. She managed Jacks' estate including the publication of several more of his works, and wrote several of her own books including The Book of Jack London Biography written by C. Merriman for Jalic Inc. I was listening to a talk this lady was giving about London and she mentioned how he'd been dropping out of college syllabi for two reasons: I have two questions about htis: Was he demeaning to women?
Are there other writers who've been dropped for similar reasons? I seem to recall a story comedy written by Jack London about the introduction of alcohol into an indian society. Okay, I'm writing a research paper on Jack London and I found a really great quote online but I can only have two Internet sources and I've already used those two internet sources so I went to 2 libraries and 3 bookstores looking for the book Martin Eden and I couldn't find it anywhere so if anyone has a copy of Martin Eden would you please look up this quote for me and tell me what page it's on.
That's all I need to know is what page its on. I'm writing a research paper on Jack London, specifically on how his life experiences relate to the litterary techniques he uses in his books. Anyway, I wanted to say in my paper that Jack London's books and short stories have a universal theme; they deal with romance, the struggle against nature, and the fight for survival.
English is not my mother language. And now I'm writting a paper of his works, concentrating on Sea-wolf and Martin Eden.
About Six pages, not an easy work. So I want to talk about my opinion. Jack london, a very different writer, writes his novels with his own experiences. With a mess mind, I don't know how to make my opinion clear, I'm trying. If you think my wrting is terrible. Add me to your list and give me your help. I recently wrote a book review of the Iron Heel over at Spike Magazine; which can be found here: In the UK where I live, the book has only just gone back into print after many years, which I find staggering.
It seems to have a very low profile indeed, most UK readers of "Call of the Wild" have never heard of it. I presume it has not been quite so neglected in the US, and wonder if it has caused more of a general critical "feel" which seems absent here. As I say in the review, I feel it has major flaws, principally in its characterisation, but I've written a 5 page research paper with this topic: Author being "Jack London". If anybody wouldn't mind Jack London had serious problems with depression and actually killed himself.
He liked dogs more than humans in reality. How do you think that this affected his writing? I'm posting this work of Jack London's because I really like it and also because it was a favourite work of a friend who absolutely lived his life to the fullest! 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 trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. Please submit a quiz here. Want to Read saving….
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Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Complete Works of Jack London 4. This is the only eBook available with every novel, every short story - even the very rare ones — play, poem, memoir, non-fiction text and much, much more! However, we do ensure our customers that every possible major text and a wealth of other material are included. We are dedicated to developing and enhancing our eBooks, which are available as free updates for customers who have already purchased them.
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Complete Works of Jack London
Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Feb 27, A. If you are looking for a compilation of London's works, this is it. I worked on this book for over a year, just picking pieces that seemed interesting at the time. Feb 19, Matt rated it it was amazing. First semester freshman year I took a sabbatical and sat in a cube and read these. THink it took a week or so. Very escapist and very worth it.
May 24, Karen is currently reading it. The people of the Abyss written in is said to have inspired George Orwell. No welfare state then. People who have become too old or ill roam the streets subsisting on orange peel, plum stones and tiny globules of bread picked up from spittle washed pavements. For some reason they are prevented from sleeping on the streets during the night and are made to tramp around dropping exhausted teemed into municipal parks at daybreak.