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Jack london
- 1. Jack London
- 2. • Born in San Francisco—January 12, 1876 • Father deserted them and mother attempted suicide • London was cared for by an African- American who would be the mother figure in his life • Mother marries John London and family settles in Oakland
- 3. • Working class family • Attends school in Oakland • Encouraged in his education by a librarian interested in him •Works at variety of odd jobs—merchant marine, jute mill worker, street- railway power plant, tramp
- 4. • Begins attending UC- Berkeley • Attempt to contact his birth father ends in rejection •Devastated London leaves for the Klondike • Develops scurvy and leaves, but he has gathered a wealth of material for writing
- 5. • Marries Bessie Maddern in 1900 • Marriage lasts 4 years produces two daughters • Marries Charmain Kittredge in 1905
- 6. • Buys property for a ranch in Sonoma • He dies there, apparently of kidney failure, in 1916 Jack London National Historic Monument
- 7. Famous Works • The Call of the Wild • White Fang •“To Build a Fire” Jack London’s writings fall into the Realistic/Naturalist movement
Editor's Notes
- His mother Flora Wellman, a music teacher and spiritualist who claimed to channel the spirit of an Indian chief, became pregnant, presumably from her union with William Chaney, an astrologer she lived with in San Francisco. According to Flora Wellman's account as recorded in the San Francisco Chronicle of June 4, 1875, Chaney demanded that she have an abortion, and when she refused, he disclaimed responsibility for the child. In desperation, she shot herself. She was not seriously wounded, but she was temporarily deranged. After she gave birth, Flora turned the baby over to ex-slave Virginia Prentiss, who would remain a major maternal figure throughout London's life. Late in the same year of 1876, Flora Wellman married John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran, and baby John, later known as Jack, came to live with the newly married couple.
- Though the family was working class, it was not as impoverished as London's later accounts claimed. London was essentially self-educated. He taught himself in the public library, mainly just by reading books. An important event was his discovery in 1886 of the Oakland Public Library and a sympathetic librarian In 1889, London began working 12 to 18 hours a day at Hickmott's Cannery. In 1893, he signed on to the sealing schooner Sophie Sutherland, bound for the coast of Japan. When he returned, the country was in the grip of the panic of '93 and Oakland was swept by labor unrest. After gruelling jobs in a jute mill and a street-railway power plant, he joined Kelly's Army and began his career as a tramp. After many experiences as a hobo, and as a sailor, he returned to Oakland and attended Oakland High School, where he contributed a number of articles to the high school's magazine, The Aegis. His first published work was "Typhoon off the coast of Japan", an account of his sailing experiences. Jack London desperately wanted to attend the University of California, Berkeley and, in 1896 after a summer of intense cramming, did so; but financial circumstances forced him to leave in 1897 On July 25, 1897, Jack London and his brother-in-law, James Shepard, sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush where he would later set his first successful stories. London's time in the Klondike, however, was quite detrimental to his health. Like so many others malnourished while involved in the Klondike Gold Rush, he developed scurvy. His gums became swollen, eventually leading to the loss of his four front teeth. A constant gnawing pain affected his hip and leg muscles, and his face was stricken with marks that would forever remind him of the struggles he faced in the Klondike. On returning to Oakland in 1898, he began struggling seriously to break into print
- family moved around the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Oakland, where Jack completed grade school. 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. He wrote to William Chaney, then living in Chicago, but Chaney responded bizarrely, considering the nature of the exchange, that he could not be Jack's father because he was impotent; he casually asserted that Jack's mother had relations with other men and averred that she had slandered him when she said he insisted on an abortion. In fact, he concluded, he was more to be pitied than Jack.[6] London was devastated. In the months following his discovery of his origins, he quit school at Berkeley and went to the Klondike.
- Jack London married Bessie Maddern on April 7, 1900, the same day The Son of the Wolf was published. Their first child, Joan, was born on January 15, 1901, and their second, Bessie (later called Becky), on October 20, 1902. Both children were born in Piedmont, California, where London also wrote one of his most celebrated works, The Call of the Wild. On July 24, 1903, Jack London told Bessie he was leaving and moved out; during 1904 Jack and Bess negotiated the terms of a divorce, and the decree was granted on November 11, 1904.[ After divorcing Maddern, London married Charmian Kittredge, in 1905
- In 1905, Jack London purchased a 1,000 acre (4 km²) ranch in Glen Ellen, Sonoma County, California on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain London spent $80,000 to build a 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m2) stone mansion on the property. Just as the mansion was nearing completion, two weeks before the Londons planned to move in, the mansion was completely destroyed by fire. The ranch is now a National Historic Landmark and is protected in Jack London State Historic Park.
- In 1905, Jack London purchased a 1,000 acre (4 km²) ranch in Glen Ellen, Sonoma County, California on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain London spent $80,000 to build a 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m2) stone mansion on the property. Just as the mansion was nearing completion, two weeks before the Londons planned to move in, the mansion was completely destroyed by fire. The ranch is now a National Historic Landmark and is protected in Jack London State Historic Park.