The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories

Jack London, born John Griffith London in 1876, led a life as adventurous as his fiction. His youth was spent on the Oakland waterfront, where he left school at fourteen to work in a cannery. By sixteen, he had experienced life as an oyster pirate and a member of the Fish Patrol in San Francisco Bay, experiences later chronicled in The Cruise of the Dazzler (1902) and Tales of the Fish Patrol (1905).

His adventurous spirit took him on a sealing cruise to Japan in 1893, followed by extensive travels across the United States. Driven by a powerful ambition to become a writer, he read voraciously and briefly studied at the University of California at Berkeley before joining the Klondike gold rush in 1897.

Upon returning to San Francisco in 1898, his Yukon short stories began appearing in publications like Overland Monthly and the Atlantic Monthly. His first collection, The Son of the Wolf, published in 1900, brought him national acclaim. In 1902, he immersed himself in the East End slums of London, documenting his observations in The People of the Abyss (1903).

London’s life was marked by further expeditions, including sailing voyages to the South Seas and around Cape Horn. He served as a correspondent for the Hearst papers during the Russo-Japanese War and undertook lecture tours. A remarkably prolific writer, he produced a vast body of work, including two autobiographical memoirs, The Road (1907) and John Barleycorn (1913). His short story collections include Love of Life (1907), Lost Face (1910), and On the Makaloa Mat (1919). Among his celebrated novels are 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 renowned Beauty Ranch in California.

Earle Labor, the foremost authority on Jack London, curated the Jack London Museum and Research Center in Shreveport and is Emeritus Professor of American Literature at Centenary College of Louisiana.

Kenneth K. Brandt is Professor of Liberal Arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He serves as editor of The Call: The Magazine of the Jack London Society and is the executive coordinator of the Jack London Society. He authored Jack London: Writers and Their Work and co-edited Approaches to Teaching the Works of Jack London with Jeanne Campbell Reesman.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.