Born John Griffith Chaney in
San Francisco, London was the son of an
astrologer who deserted his family. He quit school at the age of 14 and spent the next decade wandering
North America and the
Pacific. He went to
Japan as a
sailor, rode the rails in
America as a
hobo, spent time in
jail for
vagrancy, and headed to the
Klondike during the
gold rush.
Determined to make a living as a writer, he approached it as a trade, and found his way into print with his tales of
Alaska. His novel
Martin Eden (
1909) describes the determined and disillusioning uphill climb he made out of the "
Social Pit" from
poverty to
society. London hit the big time with the success of
The Call of the Wild in
1903 and became the highest paid writer in the
United States. Still, London was no spendthrift, and had to write for money for the rest of his life.
Thought of by many as a mere adventure writer, the best of his realistic and often horrifyingly blunt cautionary tales of the wilderness only rarely descend into
sentimentality. His most interesting works explore the gray area between
civilization and the wild, chronicling the adventures and self-discovery of
protagonists like Martin Eden and
Buck in
Call of the Wild who straddle the boundary between both worlds. London’s experiences with poverty, toil, and
prison made him a militant
socialist, and his ideas informed much of his work, especially his nonfiction and journalistic writing. His book
The Iron Heel (
1908) is a chilling prophecy of
fascist tyranny.