This year, we've been talking about Shakespeare (who died four hundred years ago) and Roald Dahl (who was born a hundred years ago). But I'd like to bring forward an author who seems to have been forgotten; the American author Jack London.
Born in San Francisco, California, on the 12th of January 1876 (a hundred and forty years ago), London was born under the name of John Griffith Chaney, before he then took his stepfather's surname, London, to become Jack London. London lived life to the full. He grew up in Oakland where he worked hard for a living, when he was ten he sold newspapers on the city streets. At thirteen, he was working an eighteen hour day in a cannery. Coming from a poor working-class family seemed to encourage young London to succeed. despite little formal education, London learnt from books from the Oakland Public Library. He eventually studied at the University of California, but due to costs, had to drop out.
In 1897, at the age of 21, London travelled to Canada in the wake of the Klondike Gold Rush. Sadly, like many others on the Gold Rush, he didn't make much money. However, he returned to California with ideas that would form the basis of the two novels, The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1905). Jack London wrote over fifty other novels like The Sea-Wolf (1904) and The Iron Heel (1908). I have read that London's works have been translated into more than fifty languages across the world.
In the novels The Call of the Wild and White Fang, the story follows the trails of a cross-breed dog, Buck and White Fang respectively. Both dogs pass through a line of owners, some good and some bad. Buck works with the sled dogs, pulling the mail, after being stolen and sold from his owners in California, before his last owner is killed by the Native Americans ("Indians" as they're called in London's novels) and finds a place with a wild wolf pack. White Fang is almost the same, but in reverse. He was born in the wild and grows up learning the laws of the wild, before found by a Native American called Grey Beaver, who then sold White Fang to a man called "Beauty" Smith, who was anything but pretty and uses White Fang in the now illegal dog fighting rings till a Californian man called Weedon Scott rescues White Fang from a near-deadly fight and allows White Fang to travel with him back to California, where he earns the respect of Scott's family after alerting the family when Scott was injured and when an escaped murderer breaks into the family house and nearly dies from the resulting fight.
Jack London married twice. He married his first wife, Bess Maddern in 1900 and together they had two daughters, Joan and Bess, before they separated in 1903. London married his second wife, Charmian Kittredge, in 1905.
In 1904, Jack London travelled to Japan as a war correspondent to cover the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. While there and in Asia, London was arrested at least three times.
For the rest of his life, Jack London supported many causes, like the women's suffrage and animal activism (the stories The Call of the Wild and White Fang are mostly from the dogs point-of-view). Sadly, London spent most of his money on his friends and drinking, and suffered many illnesses.
Jack London died on the 22nd of November 1916 in Glen Ellen in California, mostly likely from kidney disease. He was forty years old.
I hope that Jack London's books and stories will still capture our imagination as they first did upon their publication. I hope that you may find one of his stories, read and enjoy them for years to come.
Thank you again Jack London.
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