Jack London. Biography
American writer
Jack London was born in 1876 in San Francisco. His real name was John Griffit. He was the most successful writer in America in the early 20th century, whose life symbolized the power of will.
Background
London’s family was very poor, so he began to work at the age of eight. He sold newspapers, worked on ships and in factories. Jack travelled across the ocean as a sailor, tramped from San Francisco to New York with an army of unemployed and back through Canada to Vancouver. London studied the great masters of literature and read the works of great scientists and philosophers.
Imprisonment
The turning point of Jack’s life was a thirty-day imprisonment, which made him decide to turn to education and pursue a career in writing.
His best short stories
In 1897 Jack London joined the gold rush to the Klondike. He didn’t bring any gold back with him but those years left their mark in his best short stories; among them The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Son of the Wolf, and The white silence. They are gripping narratives of a man’s struggle with nature. His novel The Sea Wolf was based on his experiences at sea.
The problems of the individual and society as well as some of the difficulties London himself met during the first years of his literary work are described in The Iron Heel and Martin Eden.
The last year of life
During the sixteen years of his literary career Jack London published about fifty books: short stories, novels and essays. In 1910 London settled near Glen Ellen in California, where he intended to build his dream home. After the house burned down before completion in 1913, London was a broken and sick man. Jack London died from various diseases and drug treatments at the age of forty in 1916.