The Call of the Wild is published to worldwide acclaim.

1904London covers the Russo-Japanese war as a Hearst correspondent. Bessie files for divorce.
1905Kittredge and London are married. They purchase 129 acres in Glen Ellen, California, and name the spread “Beauty Ranch”; London uses the ranch to develop a scientific method of farming and to establish a breeding laboratory—ideas informed by his readings of Darwin. London travels through the Midwest and East on a Socialist lecture tour.
1906London meets Sinclair Lewis at Yale. They subsequently correspond, and London buys a number of plot ideas from Lewis. London falls ill and returns to California, where he covers the San Francisco earthquake for Collier’s. He begins building a sailboat, the Snark, and plans a seven-year voyage around the world. Moon-Face and Other Stories and White Fang are published.
1907Charmian and London sail the Snark from Oakland to Hawaii and the Marquesas Islands. Before Adam, a novel set in prehistoric times; Love of Life and Other Stories; and The Road, a biographical look at London’s days as a hobo, are published.
1908London returns to Oakland briefly to deal with finances, then sails aboard the Snark to Tahiti, the Fiji Islands, the New Hebrides, and the Solomon Islands. In November he falls ill with multiple tropical diseases and is hospitalized in Australia. Iron Heel, a forward-looking novel about the perils of Fascism, is published.
1909Charmian and Jack return to Oakland via Ecuador, Panama, and New Orleans. Martin Eden, a novel about a seaman who becomes a writer, is published.
1910London begins plans for Wolf House, a mansion designed to last “a thousand years.” A child, Joy, dies two days after birth. Lost Face, a collection that includes the famous story “To Build a Fire”; Revolution and Other Essays, a collection of London’s thoughts on Socialism; Burning Daylight, a novel about the Klondike Gold Rush; and Theft, a play, are published.
1911The Londons travel around California and Oregon. The Abysmal Brute, a novel about prizefighting and based on a plot purchased from Sinclair Lewis; When God Laughs and Other Stories; Adventure, a novel; and South Sea Tales are published.
1912Jack and Charmian sail around Cape Horn aboard the Dirigio. Charmian miscarries again. The House of Pride and Other Tales of Hawaii; A Son of the Sun, another collection of South Sea tales; and Smoke Bellew, stories illustrated by Frederick Remington, are published.
1913The Prohibition Party and other groups praise “John Barleycorn,” London’s astonishingly honest autobiographical treatise on alcoholism; others see this work as lacking in sincerity. Upton Sinclair noted, “That the work of a drinker who had no intention of stopping drinking should become a major propaganda piece in the campaign for Prohibition is
surely one of the choice ironies in the history of alcohol.” Fire destroys Wolf House.
1914London covers the Mexican Revolution for Collier’s, but returns home after a severe attack of dysentery.
1915London spends time in Hawaii hoping to improve his health. The Star Rover, a novel about reincarnation, is published.
1916London resigns from the Socialist party in March because of its “loss of emphasis on class struggle.” He suffers sever bouts of uremia and rheumatism, and dies on November 22 of stroke and heart failure, which his physicians attribute to gastrointestinal uremia and renal colic.

Introduction

On July 25, 1897, twenty-one-year-old Jack London lit out for the territories and followed a herd of prospectors to the “new” Northland frontier in search of gold. By the time he reached the land of hope and lore, much of the gold had already been panned out of the tributaries of the Yukon River. After a year of following the well-worn trails from San Francisco to Seattle to Alaska to the Klondike region and back, London had gained little in the way of material wealth. He returned home in the summer of 1898 poorer than he was when he left, but he carried with him a store of information about life and landscape that he would mine for years to come; his memories and experiences would guarantee both his fame and his future fortune. In the frozen Arctic, London found confirmation for his philosophical leanings, especially his penchant toward Socialism and biological and social determinism. But his experiences also taught him the value of community, of the intense bonds that a confrontation with the wild can foster in humans and in animals.

The power of the wild and the love shared by human and nonhuman are the subject of the texts brought together in this volume: The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906). The Call of the Wild garnered Jack London immediate fame; it brought him commercial and artistic success and assured him a place in the American literary canon. Mention London’s name in a casual conversation and the unmediated, enthusiastic response is almost invariably the same: “I love The Call of the Wild!” This book, it seems, has come to symbolize much for many; but when asked to articulate further what makes for the lasting appeal of the book, many, like Buck, the novel’s canine protagonist, are unable to express their feelings. What, then, makes London’s often violent yet always poignant book so enduring?

London and the Klondike

By the time London boarded a steamer for his trip from San Francisco to Alaska, he had already led a colorful and dramatic life. He was a sloop owner and oyster pirate on San Francisco Bay and a deputy for the Fish Patrol at fifteen, a sailor traveling through the North and South Pacific hunting seals at seventeen, a coal-shoveler in a power plant, a Socialist, and a tramp at eighteen. By nineteen, a weary London saw himself, with others of the working classes, near “the bottom of the [Social] Pit... myself above them, not far, and hanging on to the slippery wall by main strength and sweat” (London, War of the Classes, pp. 274—275; see “For Further Reading”). Al ithough London was far from relinquishing his love of the active life, he feared being ruled by it.