"Man-handling was merely one of the very minor unprintable horrors of the Erie County Pen. I say 'unprintable'; and in justice I must also say undescribable. They were unthinkable to me until I saw them, and I was no spring chicken in the ways of the world and the awful abysses of human degradation. It would take a deep plummet to reach bottom in the Erie County Pen, and I do but skim lightly and facetiously the surface of things as I there saw them."

"On January 26, 1903, Jack London submitted the completed manuscript of 'The Call of the Wild' to The Saturday Evening Post. On February 12 the editor agreed to purchase the story if he would cut it by five thousand words, and they asked him to set his price. Jack agreed to shorten it and set the price at three cents a word. On March 3 he received a check for seven hundred and fifty dollars. Twenty-two days later Macmillan bought the book rights for two thousand dollars with a promise to give it extensive advertising. At the time it seemed a very sensible thing to do. His previous books had not hit the best seller lists, and neither he nor Macmillan New York publisher George Platt Brett, Sr. had any idea that The Call of the Wild would do much better. If Jack had known at the time that his book would become a classic in American literature, and the royalties from it would have made him wealthy, he would have bargained differently. Yet, without the extensive promotional program, it could have easily become just another dog book. The answer will never be known, but Jack never regretted his decision, feeling that the extra promotion by Macmillan had been a major factor in its success."

Bohemian Club

Socialism

Influence on writing

always had a streak of elitism in it, and a good deal of pose. He liked to play working class intellectual when it suited his purpose. Invited to a prominent Piedmont house, he featured a flannel shirt, but, as someone there remarked, London's badge of solidarity with the working class "looked as if it had been specially laundered for the occasion." [Mark Twain said] "It would serve this man London right to have the working class get control of things. He would have to call out the militia to collect his royalties."

Racial views

In reply to yours of August 16, 1913. First of all, I should say by stopping the stupid newspaper from always fomenting race prejudice. This of course, being impossible, I would say, next, by educating the people of Japan so that they will be too intelligently tolerant to respond to any call to race prejudice. And, finally, by realizing, in industry and government, of socialism...which last word is merely a word that stands for the actual application of in the affairs of men of the theory of the Brotherhood of Man.

In the meantime the nations and races are only unruly boys who have not yet grown to the stature of men. So we must expect them to do unruly and boisterous things at times. And, just as boys grow up, so the races of mankind will grow up and laugh when they look back upon their childish quarrels.

Short stories

London's true métier was the short story . London's true genius lay in the short form, 7,500 words and under, where the flood of images in his teeming brain and the innate power of his narrative gift were at once constrained and freed. His stories that run longer than the magic 7,500 generally...but certainly not always...could have benefited from self-editing.

Novels

Jack London was an uncomfortable novelist, that form too long for his natural impatience and the quickness of his mind. His novels, even the best of them, are hugely flawed.

The Star Rover, that magnificent experiment, is actually a series of short stories connected by a unifying device Smoke Bellew is a series of stories bound together in a novel-like form by their reappearing protagonist, Kit Bellew; and John Barleycorn is a synoptic series of short episodes.

Apocrypha

Jack London Credo

I would rather be ashes than dust!

I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

The function of man is to live, not to exist.

I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.

I shall use my time.

The Scab

After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles. When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and Angels weep in Heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out...."

Might is Right

B. Traven

• The Cruise of the Dazzler (1902)
• A Daughter of the Snows (1902)
• The Call of the Wild (1903)
• The Kempton-Wace Letters (1903)

(published anonymously, co-authored with Anna Strunsky)

• The Sea-Wolf (1904)
• The Game (1905)
• White Fang (1906)
• The Iron Heel (1908)
• Martin Eden (1909)
• Burning Daylight (1910)
• Adventure (1911)
• The Scarlet Plague (1912)
• A Son of the Sun (1912)
• The Abysmal Brute (1913)
• The Valley of the Moon (1913)
• The Mutiny of the Elsinore (1914)
• The Star Rover (1915)

(published in England as The Jacket)

• The Little Lady of the Big House (1916)
• Jerry of the Islands (1917)
• Michael, Brother of Jerry (1917)
• Hearts of Three (1920)

(novelization of a movie script by Charles Goddard)

• The Assassination Bureau, Ltd (1963)

(left half-finished, completed by Robert L. Fish)

• Son of the Wolf (1900)
• Chris Farrington, Able Seaman (1901)
• Children of the Frost (1902)
• Tales of the Fish Patrol (1906)
• Lost Face (1910)
• South Sea Tales (1911)
• The House of Pride & Other Tales of Hawaii (1912)
• Smoke Bellew (1912)
• The Turtles of Tasman (1916)
• On the Makaloa Mat (1919)

• (1907)
• John Barleycorn (1913)

• The People of the Abyss (1903)
• Revolution, and other Essays (1910)
• The Cruise of the Snark (1911)

• "A Curious Fragment" (1908)
• "A Piece of Steak" (1909)
• "A Relic of the Pliocene" (1901)
• "A Thousand Deaths" (1899)
• "An Odyssey of the North" (1900)
• "All Gold Canyon" (1905)
• "Aloha Oe" (1908)
• "Diable...A Dog" (1902), renamed Bâtard in 1904
• "Before Adam" (1907)
• "By The Turtles of Tasman"
• "Even unto Death" (1900)
• "Goliah" (1910)
• "Good-by, Jack" (1909)
• "In a Far Country" (1899)
• "In the Forests of the North" (1902)
• "Keesh, Son of Keesh" (1902)
• "Love of Life" (1905)
• "Moon-Face" (1902)
• "Negore the Coward" (1904)
• "Samuel" (1909)
• "South of the Slot" (1909)
• "That Spot" (1908)
• "The Apostate" (1906)
• "The Chinago" (1909)
• "The Death of Ligoun" (1902)
• "The Dream of Debs" (1909)
• "The Dominant Primordial Beast" (1903)
• "The Enemy of All the World" (1908)
• "The God of His Fathers" (1901)
• "The Heathen" (1908)
• "The King of Mazy May" (1899)
• "The Law of Life" (1901)
• "The Leopard Man's Story" (1903)
• "The Madness of John Harned"
• " The Man With the Gash" (1900)
• "The Mexican" (1911)
• "The Minions of Midas" (1901)
• "The One Thousand Dozen" (1903)
• "The Red One" (1918)
• "The Rejuvenation of Major Rathbone" (1899)
• "The Scarlet Plague" (1912)
• "The Seed of McCoy" (1909)
• "The Shadow and the Flash" (1903)
• "The Strength of the Strong" (1911)
• "The Sun-Dog Trail" (1905)
• "The Unparalleled Invasion" (1910)
• "The White Silence" (1899)
• "To Build a Fire" (1902, revised 1908)
• "Told in the Drooling Ward" (1910)
• "To the Man on Trail" (1898)
• "War" (1911)
• "When the World was Young" (1910)
• "Who Believes in Ghosts!" (1895)

• Theft (1910)
• Daughters of the Rich: A One Act Play (1915)
• a California Forest Play (1916)

• Mount London, also known as Boundary Peak 100, on the Alaska-British Columbia boundary, in the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, is named for him.
• A leftist artists' club in Newark, New Jersey, was named after him.
• Jack London Square on the waterfront of Oakland, California was named for him.
• He was honored by the United States Postal Service with a 25¢ Great Americans series postage stamp.
• The mascot for Sonoma State University is a Seawolf named after his adventure novel Sea-Wolf. The mascot is a Seawolf because of the ties London had to Sonoma County.

• Stasz [1] describes this as "Comments on 400 books in London's personal library, and their relationship to particular writings. An exceptional guide to London's intellectual influences."
• (Reprint; originally published anonymously by the Macmillan Company, 1903). Complete original edition also available as page images at Google Books [2].
• Includes : The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea-Wolf, eleven "Selected Klondike Short Stories", thirteen other "Selected Short Stories"
• Includes The People of the Abyss, The Road, The Iron Heel, Martin Eden, John Barleycorn, and his essays How I Became a Socialist, The Scab, The Jungle, and Revolution.
• Stone, Irving (1938) Sailor on Horseback. Dale L. Walker notes [3]: "Sailor on Horseback was a massively flawed book . The author depended too much on London's fiction to recreate the author's life . Stone the novelist could not escape novelizing Sailor on Horseback (later editions were more factually subtitled A Biographical Novel)."
• Starr, Kevin (1973) Americans and the California Dream 1850—1915. Oxford University Press. 1986 reprint: ISBN 0-19-504233-6