1876-1916

Jack London

London

London was born in San Francisco, CA to Flora Wellman, an unmarried woman who had run away from her Ohio family.

His father was most likely William Chaney, who left London’s mother when he discovered her pregnancy.

Jack London was adopted and raised by John London, the man his mother later married.

He was raised in Oakland.

London

The Londons never really established themselves.They alternated between hard work and

spirituality and get rich quick schemes.They were never really able to rise from lower

middle class.London worked mainly manual labor, was a sailor,

an apprentice in many capacities, and a hobo.He was imprisoned for vagrancy, which ultimately

awakened him to his descent towards the “social pit”.

London

He went quickly back to high school, finished, left for the gold rush in Alaska, and decided and some point to be a writer.

London approached writing as a way to make a middle class existence.

He did not approach writing as “high art” like the modernists, but as a middle class occupation.

He rocketed to success with his Alaska stories and with Call of the Wild (1903) at age 26.

London

After his initial success, London lapsed into depression, terminated his first marriage, and became disillusioned.

He eventually rebounded, remarried, and wrote 51 volumes of stories before he died.

London also worked as a journalist and essayist.

A member of the move towards “The American Dream,” his best work embodies its contradictions, successes and failures.

He died in poor health, his body marked by hard work.

He died of a self-administered overdose of morphine.

He was trying to treat nephritis pain, which came as an ancillary symptom of his alcohol abuse.