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Jack London, Writer
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 committed suicide at the age of 40.
http://www.historychannel.com/perl/print_book.pl?ID=98376
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