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Early Life and Family
John Griffith Chaney, later known worldwide as Jack London, was born on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco, California. His mother, Flora Wellman, was a music teacher and spiritualist; his probable biological father, the astrologer William Chaney, denied paternity and did not raise him. After Flora married Civil War veteran John London, the boy took his stepfather's surname and became Jack London. The family moved frequently around the Bay Area, living in straitened circumstances that left a lasting mark on him.

Education and Self-Making
London attended Oakland High School, where the poet Ina Coolbrith encouraged his reading and writing. He devoured books at the Oakland Public Library and developed the habit of rigorous self-education. Briefly, in 1896, 1897, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, but left after a semester for lack of funds and because he was impatient to earn a living and see the world.

Hard Work, the Sea, and the Road
From adolescence, London worked grueling jobs: in a cannery, a jute mill, and a power plant. At 17 he bought a small sloop, the Razzle-Dazzle, and became an "oyster pirate" on San Francisco Bay before switching sides to the California Fish Patrol. In 1893 he shipped out on the sealing schooner Sophie Sutherland to the North Pacific and the coast of Japan, a voyage that seeded his early sea tales. In 1894 he joined Kelly's Army, a western contingent of Coxey's Army of unemployed men marching on Washington, D.C., and hoboed across the country. Arrested in upstate New York for vagrancy, he spent time in jail, experiences he later recounted in The Road (1907).

Becoming a Writer
Determined to escape wage labor, London set himself a strict daily writing quota and began sending out manuscripts. He won a newspaper contest with "Story of a Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan" and placed early stories in magazines including Overland Monthly. The discipline he forged in these years, 1, 000 words every day, sustained one of the most prolific literary careers of his era.

The Klondike and Breakthrough
In 1897 London joined the Klondike Gold Rush, hauling supplies over the Chilkoot Pass and wintering in the Yukon. He found no gold, contracted scurvy, and returned in 1898, but the North gave him his great subject: the stark struggle for survival. His first book, The Son of the Wolf (1900), drew on Klondike tales. The Call of the Wild (1903) made him famous; White Fang (1906) and many short stories, "To Build a Fire", "Love of Life", "The Law of Life", extended his reputation as a master of adventure fiction with existential bite.

Themes, Style, and Ideas
London wrote in a vigorous, plain style shaped by journalism and by his belief in nature's implacable laws. His fiction often tests the boundary between civilization and the wild, celebrates endurance, and wrestles with determinism, individual will, and class conflict. He avidly read Darwin, Spencer, Nietzsche, and Marx, and infused his work with both social critique and biological fatalism. His outlook also reflected racial attitudes of his time; several works traffic in racial hierarchies and stereotypes that have drawn strong, enduring criticism.

Socialism and Public Life
A committed socialist from the 1890s, London joined the Socialist Labor Party and later the Socialist Party of America. He ran twice for mayor of Oakland (1901 and 1905) on socialist platforms and wrote polemical essays collected in The War of the Classes (1905) and Revolution and Other Essays (1910). In 1902 he lived in London's East End to observe working-class misery firsthand, producing The People of the Abyss (1903). Over time, his politics blended radical class analysis with a rugged individualism that sometimes sat uneasily together; disillusioned, he resigned from the Socialist Party in 1916.

Marriages, Family, and Literary Circle
In 1900 London married Elizabeth "Bessie" Maddern, with whom he had two daughters, Joan and Bess (known as Becky). The couple divorced in 1904. In 1905 he married Charmian Kittredge, his closest companion in travel and work; she served as his editor, typist, and first reader, and later wrote memoirs of their life together. Around him gathered a vibrant Bay Area circle: poet George Sterling; mentor-librarian Ina Coolbrith; the writer and activist Anna Strunsky (with whom he co-wrote The Kempton-Wace Letters); early correspondent Cloudesley Johns; and figures of the San Francisco Bohemian Club. Ninetta "Nin" Eames, Charmian's aunt and an editor at Overland Monthly, championed his early work. Photographer-adventurer Martin Johnson sailed with Jack and Charmian and documented their travels.

Reporting, Travel, and the Sea
London parlayed his fame into globe-trotting reportage. In 1904 he covered the Russo-Japanese War as a correspondent for William Randolph Hearst's newspapers, clashing with authorities and briefly jailed by the Japanese. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, his on-the-spot essay "The Story of an Eyewitness" appeared in Collier's. With Charmian he undertook a bold Pacific voyage on the ketch Snark (1907, 1909), visiting Hawaii, the Marquesas, Tahiti, the Solomons, and Australia; he chronicled it in The Cruise of the Snark (1911) and tales later collected in South Sea Stories. In Hawaii he learned and promoted surfing, writing enthusiastically about the sport and helping introduce it to mainland readers.

The Beauty Ranch and Experiment
Flush with earnings but chronically overextended, London bought and consolidated nearly 1, 400 acres in Sonoma Valley, the "Beauty Ranch", where he pursued progressive agriculture: terracing, soil conservation, and scientific breeding. He designed an innovative circular "Pig Palace" and planted extensive orchards and vineyards. His dream house, Wolf House, a massive fieldstone mansion, burned down in 1913 just before completion, a financial and emotional blow from which he never fully recovered.

Work Ethic, Business, and Controversies
London was among the highest-paid American writers of his day, publishing incessantly in magazines and books and negotiating aggressively with publishers such as The Macmillan Company. He defended authors' rights, battled piracy, and built a global brand before the term existed. Accusations of plagiarism surfaced periodically; London acknowledged borrowing incidents and backgrounds from sources and insisted he transformed them into original art. He wrote candidly about his drinking in John Barleycorn (1913), which has complicated his reputation as both a temperance text and a memoir of addiction.

Major Works
- The Son of the Wolf (1900)
- The Call of the Wild (1903)
- The People of the Abyss (1903)
- The Sea-Wolf (1904)
- White Fang (1906)
- The Road (1907)
- The Iron Heel (1908)
- Martin Eden (1909)
- Burning Daylight (1910)
- South Sea Tales (1911) and The Cruise of the Snark (1911)
- The Valley of the Moon (1913)
- John Barleycorn (1913)
- The Star Rover (1915)

Final Years and Death
Constant production, physical hardships from earlier adventures, and the strains of ranch finance eroded London's health. He suffered from gastrointestinal troubles, pain treated with morphine, and kidney disease. On November 22, 1916, at his Glen Ellen ranch, he died at age 40; the death certificate cited uremia (kidney failure). Speculation about suicide has persisted, but most biographers attribute his death to natural causes complicated by illness and medication.

Legacy
Jack London's blend of adventure narrative, social conscience, and philosophical inquiry made him one of the most widely read American authors of the early 20th century. His portraits of the North and the sea, his iconically resilient animals and men, and his reportage shaped popular understandings of nature, labor, and empire. While his work remains controversial for its racial assumptions and contradictions, his best fiction, spare, propulsive, and unsentimental, continues to be read across the world, and his Sonoma ranch is preserved as a state historic park dedicated to his life and art.

Our collection contains 34 quotes who is written by Jack, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Motivational - Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Friendship.

Other people realated to Jack: Upton Sinclair (Author), Robert Collier (Publisher), Mary Austin (Writer), Jack Johnson (Athlete)

• Jack London books in order: 1903 The Call of the Wild; 1904 The Sea-Wolf; 1906 White Fang; 1909 Martin Eden; 1915 The Star Rover.
• Jack London famous works: The Call of the Wild; White Fang; The Sea-Wolf; Martin Eden; To Build a Fire.
• Jack London short stories: To Build a Fire; The Law of Life; Love of Life; A Piece of Steak; The Mexican.
• Jack London Awkarin: No relation. Awkarin is an Indonesian influencer; Jack London is the novelist.
• Jack London cause of death: Uremic poisoning (kidney failure) in 1916; suicide not proven.
• Jack London books: The Call of the Wild; White Fang; The Sea-Wolf; Martin Eden; The Iron Heel.
• How old was Jack London? He became 40 years old

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