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The Portable Jack London

Part of Portable Library

Author Jack London

Edited by Earle Labor

Paperback

$21.00 US

Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Classics

5.2"W x 7.7"H x 1.3"D | 17 oz | 32 per carton

On sale Jul 01, 1994 | 608 Pages | 9780140179699

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Alfred Kazin has aptly remarked that "the greatest story Jack London ever wrote was the story he lived." Newsboy, factory "work beast," gang member, hobo, sailor, Klondike argonaut, socialist crusader, war correspondent, utopian farmer, and world-famous adventurer: London is the closest thing America has had to a literary folk hero. His writing itself is concerned with nothing less than the largest questions and the grandest themes: What does it mean to be a human being in the natural world? What debts do human beings owe each other - and to all their fellow creatures? This collection places London, at last, securely within the American literary pantheon. It includes the complete novel The Call of the Wild; such famous stories as "Love of Life," "To Build a Fire," and "All Gold Canyon"; journalism, political writings, literary criticism, and selected letters.

Jack London—his real name was John Griffith London—had a wild and colorful youth on the waterfront of Oakland, his native city. Born in 1876, he left school at the age of fourteen and worked in a cannery. By the time he was sixteen he had been both an oyster pirate and a member of the Fish Patrol in San Francisco Bay. He later wrote about these experiences in The Cruise of the Dazzler (1902) and Tales of the Fish Patrol (1905). In 1893 he joined a sealing cruise that took him as far as Japan. Returning to the United States, he traveled throughout the country. He was determined to become a writer and read voraciously. After a brief period of study at the University of California at Berkeley he joined the gold rush to the Klondike in 1897. He returned to San Francisco the following year. His short stories of the Yukon were published in Overland Monthly (1898) and the Atlantic Monthly (1899), and in 1900 his first collection, The Son of the Wolf, appeared, bringing him national fame. In 1902 he went to London, where he studied the slum conditions of the East End. He wrote about this experience in The People of the Abyss (1903). His life was exciting and eventful. There were sailing voyages to the South Seas and around Cape Horn. He reported on the Russo-Japanese War for the Hearst papers and gave lecture tours. A prolific writer, he published an enormous number of stories and novels. Besides two revealing memoirs, The Road (1907) and John Barleycorn (1913), he authored several collections of short stories, including Love of Life (1907), Lost Face (1910), and On the Makaloa Mat (1919). He also wrote many novels, including The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea-Wolf (1904), White Fang (1906), Before Adam (1907), The Iron Heel (1908), Martin Eden (1909), and The Star Rover (1915). Jack London died in 1916, at his famous Beauty Ranch in California. View titles by Jack London

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Introduction
Chronology of Jack London's Life and Books
Note on the Texts and Selections
Acknowledgments
Suggestions for Further Reading
Selected Stories
To the Man on Trail
In a Far Country
The Law of Life
A Relic of the Pliocene
Nam-Bok the Unveracious
To Build a Fire (1902)
Moon-Face
Bâtard
Love of Life
All Gold Canyon
The Apostate
To Build a Fire (1908)
The Chinago
Koolau the Leper
Good-by, Jack
Mauki
The Strength of the Strong
Samuel
A Piece of Steak
The Madness of John Harned
The Night-Born
War
Told in the Drooling Ward
The Mexican
The Red One
The Water Baby
The Call of the Wild
Selected Nonfiction
Typhoon off the Coast of Japan
On the Writer's Philosophy of Life
First Aid to Rising Authors
Review of Frank Norris's The Octopus
Excerpts from The People of the Abyss
How I Became a Socialist
Getting into Print
The Terrible and Tragic in Fiction
What Life Means to Me
Things Alive
The Story of an Eye-Witness
Reports on the James J. Jeffries-Jack Johnson Championship Fight
A Classic of the Sea
Introduction to The Cry for Justice
Eight Factors of Literary Success
A Selection of Letters
To the Editor, San Francisco Bulletin, September 17, 1898
To Mabel Applegarth, November 27, 1898
To Mabel Applegarth, November 30, 1898
To Anna Strunsky, December 21, 1899
To Houghton, Mifflin & Co., January 31, 1900
To Cloudesley Johns, June 16, 1900
To George P. Brett, March 10, 1903
To Charmian Kittredge, September 30, 1903
To Frederick I. Bamford, May 28, 1905
To Cloudesley Johns, September 4, 1905
To "Dear Comrades," December 1905
To S.S. McClure, April 10, 1906
To the Editor of Editor Magazine, April 1907
To Becky London, October 28, 1908
To Richard W. Gilder, December 22, 1908
To William E. Walling, November 30, 1909
To the Editor, Honolulu Advertiser, January 7, 1910
To the "Comrades of the Mexican Revolution," February 4, 1911
To Ethan A. Cross, March 17, 1914
To Joseph Conrad, June 4, 1915
To Ethelda Hesser, September 21, 1915
To John R. Lindmark, September 21, 1915
To Mary Austin, November 5, 1915
To the Members of Local Glen Ellen, Socialist Labor Party, March 7, 1916
To Leo B. Mihan, October 24, 1916
To Waldo Frank, November 5, 1916
Suggestions for Further Reading

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