Jack London was born in San Francisco. He was deserted by his father and raised in Oakland by his mother and stepfather, whose surname, London, he also took. After leaving school at the age of 14 London worked as a seaman, rode in freight trains as a hobo and adopted socialistic views as a member of the protest armies of unemployed. In 1894 he was jailed for vagrancy.

Without having much formal education London educated himself in public libraries, and gained at the age of 19 admittance to the University of California at Berkeley, but quit school and went to seek a fortune in the Klondike gold rush of 1897.

The attempt to find gold was unsuccessful and London began to write, producing steadily novels, nonfiction and short stories, becoming in his lifetime one of the most popular authors. His first novel, THE SON OF THE WOLF, appeared in 1900 gained wide audience as his Alaska stories THE CALL OF THE WILD (1903), WHITE FANG (1906), and BURNING DAYLIGHT (1910).

In 1904 London worked as a correspondent for Hearst's newspapers in the war between Russia and Japan (1904-05). In 1907 London started his sailing journey around the world, and settled in 1910 in California.

Among London's other best-known works are THE SEA-WOLF (1904), remembered from its Nietzschean hero, visionary fantasy THE IRON HEEL (1907), which became very popular in the Soviet Union, THE CRUISE OF THE SNARK (1911), a travel book from his journeys in South Pasific, and semi-autobiographical MARTIN EDEN (1909).

Debts, alcoholism and fear of losing his creativity led London to commit suicide as the central character in his novel Martin Eden.

London's literary models: Kipling, Stevenson. He was also influenced by the theories of Darwin, Spencer, Marx and Nietzsche. Several of London's works depict the struggle between the capitalist class, trying to establish a fascist oligarchy, and the proletariat fighting for socialism. - Literary "successor": Upton Sinclair.

Selected works:

• THE SON OF THE WOLF, 1900
• A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS, 1902
• CALL OF THE WILD, 1903 - - film 1935, dir. by William Wellman
• THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS, 1903
• THE SEAWOLF, 1904 - film 1941, dir. by Michael Cirtiz; film 1971, dir. by Wolfgang Staudte
• WHITE FANG, 1905 film 1974, dir, by Lucio Fulci
• THE WAR OF THE CLASSES, 1905
• THE ROAD, 1907
• THE IRON HEEL, 1907 - film 1919, dir. by Vladimir Gardin
• MARTIN EDEN, 1909 film 1918, dir. by Nikandr Turkin, script by Vladimir Mayakovsky (also in main role)
• BURNING DAYLIGHT, 1910 -
• SMOKE BELLEW, 1911
• JOHN BARLEYCORN, 1913
• THE VALLEY OF THE MOON, 1913
• THE STAR ROVER, 1915
• CURIOUS FRAGMENTS: JACK LONDON'S TALES OF FANTASY FICTION, 1975
• SELECTED SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY STORIES, 1978

For further reading: Jack London: A Bibliography, by H.C. Woodbridge (1973)