John Griffith Chaney, better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist.
78 Facts About Jack London
2.
Jack London was an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.
3.
Jack London wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction expose The People of the Abyss, War of the Classes, and Before Adam.
4.
Jack London wrote about the South Pacific in stories such as "The Pearls of Parlay", and "The Heathen".
5.
Biographer Clarice Stasz and others believe Jack London's father was astrologer William Chaney.
6.
Jack London was not seriously wounded, but she was temporarily deranged.
7.
The family moved around the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Oakland, where Jack London completed public grade school.
8.
In 1897, when he was 21 and a student at the University of California, Berkeley, Jack London searched for and read the newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and the name of his biological father.
9.
Jack London wrote to William Chaney, then living in Chicago.
10.
Jack London was devastated by his father's letter; in the months following, he quit school at Berkeley and went to the Klondike during the gold rush boom.
11.
Jack London was born near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco.
12.
In 1885, Jack London found and read Ouida's long Victorian novel Signa.
13.
Jack London credited this as the seed of his literary success.
14.
Jack London hired on as a member of the California Fish Patrol.
15.
Jack London contributed a number of articles to the high school's magazine, The Aegis.
16.
Jack London's first published work was "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan", an account of his sailing experiences.
17.
Jack London desperately wanted to attend the University of California, located in Berkeley.
18.
Heinold's was the place where Jack London met Alexander McLean, a captain known for his cruelty at sea.
19.
Jack London based his protagonist Wolf Larsen, in the novel The Sea-Wolf, on McLean.
20.
Jack London's gums became swollen, leading to the loss of his four front teeth.
21.
Jack London left Oakland with a social conscience and socialist leanings; he returned to become an activist for socialism.
22.
Jack London concluded that his only hope of escaping the work "trap" was to get an education and "sell his brains".
23.
Jack London saw his writing as a business, his ticket out of poverty and, he hoped, as a means of beating the wealthy at their own game.
24.
On returning to California in 1898, Jack London began working to get published, a struggle described in his novel Martin Eden.
25.
Jack London's first published story since high school was "To the Man On Trail", which has frequently been collected in anthologies.
26.
Jack London began his writing career just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines.
27.
Jack London received $141.25 for this story on May 27,1902.
28.
Jack London told some of his critics that man's actions are the main cause of the behavior of their animals, and he would show this famously in another story, The Call of the Wild.
29.
In early 1903, Jack London sold The Call of the Wild to The Saturday Evening Post for $750 and the book rights to Macmillan.
30.
In 1902, Sterling helped Jack London find a home closer to his own in nearby Piedmont.
31.
Jack London was later to depict Sterling as Russ Brissenden in his autobiographical novel Martin Eden and as Mark Hall in The Valley of the Moon.
32.
In later life Jack London indulged his wide-ranging interests by accumulating a personal library of 15,000 volumes.
33.
Jack London referred to his books as "the tools of my trade".
34.
Jack London married Elizabeth Mae "Bessie" Maddern on April 7,1900, the same day The Son of the Wolf was published.
35.
Jack London was related to stage actresses Minnie Maddern Fiske and Emily Stevens.
36.
Jack London had made it clear to Bessie that he did not love her, but that he liked her enough to make a successful marriage.
37.
Jack London met Bessie through his friend at Oakland High School, Fred Jacobs; she was Fred's fiancee.
38.
Anna, writing "Dane Kempton's" letters, arguing for a romantic view of marriage, while Jack London, writing "Herbert Wace's" letters, argued for a scientific view, based on Darwinism and eugenics.
39.
Jack London reportedly complained to friends Joseph Noel and George Sterling:.
40.
On July 24,1903, Jack London told Bessie he was leaving and moved out.
41.
Jack London accepted an assignment of the San Francisco Examiner to cover the Russo-Japanese War in early 1904, arriving in Yokohama on January 25,1904.
42.
Jack London was arrested by Japanese authorities in Shimonoseki, but released through the intervention of American ambassador Lloyd Griscom.
43.
Jack London asked William Randolph Hearst, the owner of the San Francisco Examiner, to be allowed to transfer to the Imperial Russian Army, where he felt that restrictions on his reporting and his movements would be less severe.
44.
Jack London was elected to honorary membership in the Bohemian Club and took part in many activities.
45.
Jack London had been introduced to Kittredge in 1900 by her aunt Netta Eames, who was an editor at Overland Monthly magazine in San Francisco.
46.
Jack London was injured when he fell from a buggy, and Netta arranged for Charmian to care for him.
47.
At some point the relationship became romantic, and Jack London divorced his wife to marry Charmian, who was five years his senior.
48.
Jack London had contrasted the concepts of the "Mother Girl" and the "Mate Woman" in The Kempton-Wace Letters.
49.
Jack London's had comedy relief in it and a sort of easy-going romance.
50.
In 1906, Jack London published in Collier's magazine his eye-witness report of the San Francisco earthquake.
51.
In 1905, Jack London purchased a 1,000 acres ranch in Glen Ellen, Sonoma County, California, on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain.
52.
Jack London conceived of a system of ranching that today would be praised for its ecological wisdom.
53.
Jack London hoped to adapt the wisdom of Asian sustainable agriculture to the United States.
54.
Jack London hired both Italian and Chinese stonemasons, whose distinctly different styles are obvious.
55.
Jack London's workers laughed at his efforts to play big-time rancher [and considered] the operation a rich man's hobby.
56.
Jack London spent $80,000 to build a 15,000-square-foot stone mansion called Wolf House on the property.
57.
Jack London's last visit to Hawaii, beginning in December 1915, lasted eight months.
58.
Jack London met with Duke Kahanamoku, Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana'ole, Queen Lili'uokalani and many others, before returning to his ranch in July 1916.
59.
Jack London was suffering from kidney failure, but he continued to work.
60.
Jack London witnessed animal cruelty in the training of circus animals, and his subsequent novels Jerry of the Islands and Michael, Brother of Jerry included a foreword entreating the public to become more informed about this practice.
61.
Jack London died November 22,1916, in a sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch.
62.
Jack London had been a robust man but had suffered several serious illnesses, including scurvy in the Klondike.
63.
Jack London's ashes were buried on his property not far from the Wolf House.
64.
Jack London's funeral took place on November 26,1916, attended only by close friends, relatives, and workers of the property.
65.
Jack London said he drifted and nearly succeeded in drowning before sobering up and being rescued by fishermen.
66.
Jack London was vulnerable to accusations of plagiarism, both because he was such a conspicuous, prolific, and successful writer and because of his methods of working.
67.
Jack London acknowledged using it as a source and claimed to have written a letter to Young thanking him.
68.
Jack London insisted he had clipped a reprint of the article, which had appeared in an American newspaper, and believed it to be a genuine speech delivered by the Bishop of Jack London.
69.
Jack London wrote from a socialist viewpoint, which is evident in his novel The Iron Heel.
70.
Jack London wrote that his individualism was hammered out of him, and he was politically reborn.
71.
Jack London ran unsuccessfully as the high-profile Socialist candidate for mayor of Oakland in 1901 and 1905, toured the country lecturing on socialism in 1906, and published two collections of essays about socialism: War of the Classes and Revolution, and other Essays.
72.
Jack London was more bored by the class struggle than he cared to admit.
73.
Jack London shared common concerns among many European Americans in California about Asian immigration, described as "the yellow peril"; he used the latter term as the title of a 1904 essay.
74.
Jack London's writings have been popular among the Japanese, who believe he portrayed them positively.
75.
Jack London advised his collaborator Anna Strunsky during preparation of The Kempton-Wace Letters that he would take the role of eugenics in mating, while she would argue on behalf of romantic love.
76.
Jack London was an uncomfortable novelist, that form too long for his natural impatience and the quickness of his mind.
77.
Stasz notes, "Even more so than today journalists' quotes were unreliable or even sheer inventions," and says no direct source in Jack London's writings has been found.
78.
However, at least one line, according to Stasz, is authentic, being referenced by Jack London and written in his own hand in the autograph book of Australian suffragette Vida Goldstein:.