Jack London: The Call of the Wild
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Overview
© https://www.biography.com/writer/jack-london; Access Date: December 19, 2025
John Griffith Chaney, better known as Jack London, was born on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco, California. Jack, as he came to call himself as a boy, was the son of Flora Wellman, an unwed mother, and William Chaney, an attorney, journalist and pioneering leader in the new field of American astrology.
His father was never part of his life, and his mother ended up marrying John London, a Civil War veteran, who moved his new family around the Bay Area before settling in Oakland.
London grew up working-class. He carved out his own hardscrabble life as a teen. He rode trains, pirated oysters, shoveled coal, worked on a sealing ship on the Pacific and found employment in a cannery. In his free time he hunkered down at libraries, soaking up novels and travel books.
His life as a writer essentially began in 1893. That year he had weathered a harrowing sealing voyage, one in which a typhoon had nearly taken out London and his crew. The 17-year-old adventurer had made it home and regaled his mother with his tales of what had happened to him. When she saw an announcement in one of the local papers for a writing contest, she pushed her son to write down and submit his story.
Armed with just an eighth-grade education, London captured the $25 first prize, beating out college students from Berkeley and Stanford.
For London, the contest was an eye-opening experience, and he decided to dedicate his life to writing short stories. But he had trouble finding willing publishers. After trying to make a go of it on the East Coast, he returned to California and briefly enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley, before heading north to Canada to seek at least a small fortune in the gold rush happening in the Yukon.
By the age of 22, however, London still hadn't put together much of a living. He had once again returned to California and was still determined to carve out a living as a writer. His experience in the Yukon had convinced him he had stories he could tell. In addition, his own poverty and that of the struggling men and women he encountered pushed him to embrace socialism.
In 1899 he began publishing stories in the Overland Monthly. The experience of writing and getting published greatly disciplined London as a writer. From that time forward, London made it a practice to write at least a thousand words a day.
London found fame and some fortune at the age of 27 with his novel The Call of the Wild (1903), which told the story of a dog that finds its place in the world as a sled dog in the Yukon.
The success did little to soften London's hard-driving lifestyle. A prolific writer, he published more than 50 books over the last 16 years of his life. The titles included The People of the Abyss (1903), which offered a scathing critique of capitalism; White Fang (1906), a popular tale about a wild wolf dog becoming domesticated; and John Barleycorn (1913), a memoir of sorts that detailed his lifelong battle with alcohol.
He charged forth in other ways, too. He covered the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 for Hearst papers, introduced American readers to Hawaii and the sport of surfing, and frequently lectured about the problems associated with capitalism.
In 1900 London married Bess Maddern. The couple had two daughters together, Joan and Bess. By some accounts Bess and London's relationship was constructed less around love and more around the idea that they could have strong, healthy children together. It's not surprising, then, that their marriage lasted just a few years. In 1905, following his divorce from Bess, London married Charmian Kittredge, whom he would be with for the rest of his life.
For much of the last decade of his life, London faced a number of health issues. This included kidney disease, which ended up taking his life. He died at his California ranch, which he shared with Kittredge, on November 22, 1916.
Suggested Media
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Web Resources: Print
1. Biography: https://www.thoughtco.com/jack-london-biography-4156925
2. Biography: https://www.biography.com/writer/jack-london
3. Biography: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jack-London
4. Biography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London
5. OVERVIEW (SMITHSONIAN): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/short-heroic-rags-riches-life-jack-london-180961200/
6. OVERVIEW (THE NEW YORKER): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/28/four-legs-good
7. OVERVIEW (NPR): https://www.npr.org/2016/11/26/502608299/100-years-after-jack-londons-death-hearing-his-call
8. OVERVIEW (NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC): https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/adventure/2020/02/wolf-man-why-life-of-jack-london-was-wild-his-books
9. OVERVIEW (LITERARY HUB): https://lithub.com/jack-london-rags-to-riches-and-back-again/
10. LINKS TO BOOKS AND STORIES: https://americanliterature.com/author/jack-london
11. JACK LONDON STATE HISTORIC PARK: https://jacklondonpark.com/
12. SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY: https://london.sonoma.edu/
Web Resources: Video
1. BIOGRAPHY (incl. interview with daughter Becky): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGLL22-CIw4
2. JACK LONDON’S RANCH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV6T728Ucx4
3. ANIMATED “TO BUILD A FIRE” (NEXUS STUDIOS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzRrPQJlUwM
4. DOCUMENTARY (1 hr 29 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnbXbidd13Y
5. SHORT BIOGRAPHY (22 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmBVXfSHUKs
Jack London Bibliography
1. https://jacklondonpark.com/jack-london-books/
2. FULL LISTING OF ALL WORKS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London#List_of_publications
3. TOP TEN: https://interestingliterature.com/2023/10/best-jack-london-books/
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Jack London's Mark on Literature
- ©JEANNE C. REESMAN. SPECIAL TO THE SONOMA INDEX-TRIBUNE; May 5, 2016 https://www.sonomanews.com/article/lifestyle/jack-londons-mark-on-literature/
- Access date: 19 December 2025
- Jeanne Campbell Reesman is a Professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio and the coauthor of “Jack London’s Racial Lives” and author of “Jack London, Photographer.”
Jack London means many things around the globe. He was a pivotal writer at the turn of the century whose literary naturalism and socialism also had important effects on the literatures of many nations – including, first the United States, but by the year 2000, also in nearly 100 separate languages.
He led a nonstop life full of his great love of the land and sea, advanced ideas about agriculture, adventuring abroad, sailing, socialism and photography. His marriage to his second wife was intensely loving. His personal biography is so compelling that many do not fully appreciate his status as a contributor to literature.
First: influence and vision. It is hard to imagine the advent of an Upton Sinclair, Ernest Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy, perhaps even William Faulkner, without the “naturalists” and especially Jack London. These - Frank Norris, also a Californian; Stephen Crane; Theodore Dreiser; and Edith Wharton - are usually listed as authors intent upon exposing the deterministic world of uncaring Darwinian struggle for survival. Norris was the only one of them who had a theory of naturalism, which he learned from Émile Zola’s naturalistic 20-volume French saga of the decline of a set of French families. They focused on topics the former generation of “realists” found unacceptable. Even Mark Twain, despite his inimitable realism and incessant attacks upon God and the universe, was a bit fussy about class, gender, sexuality and Native Americans.
But London’s naturalism does not offer only bleak despair in the face of what he called Nature in the Yukon: the “white silence”; instead, as a socialist, he offers a hope that humanity – if it is united in comradeship and brotherhood – could rise above or at least survive the cold dictates of giant Pacific storms, horrors such as the Chilkoot Trail, or human disasters like the homeless of the East End of London he wrote about in “The People of the Abyss.” In the end, though he was passionately naturalistic in his outlook, he was also passionately idealistic in his hopes for his fellow man and woman.
His work transformed fiction. His influence was immediate and global after the publication of “The Call of the Wild” in 1903, but he was not only influential in his Klondike stories, but in his tales of the Pacific, his socialist speeches, even horror stories. He wrote the most famous autobiography of alcoholism, “John Barleycorn.”
He invented the first prize-fight story, and made as his hero a skinny teen boxing for money in Los Angeles to buy guns for the Mexican Revolution. He wrote feminist novels. He wrote poetry and plays.
Jack London envisioned a world for every working man or woman, slave, writer/artist or anyone, in which his chosen method of “sincerity” as a cardinal virtue would be realized. He also wrote for the general public - scattered over many nations - stories that seemed elemental on one level, but rich with myth and symbol on other levels.
Second: diversity. He once gave a lecture in Honolulu on “The Language of the Tribe” in which he advocated Americans learning Japanese and vice versa.
His heroes are always quite diverse: Russians and Americans in the Klondike; American indians; a rough-and-tumble crew aboard a North Pacific sealing ship; Calilfornians from Truckee to Mexico; South Sea Islanders, lepers in Hawaii and many more.
One of his most unlikely heroes is a runaway slave in “Mauki.” Based on a true tale the Londons heard on Lowe Howe Atoll near the end of the Snark journey, Mauki was the son of a chief on the island of Malaita in the Solomons. He is kidnapped and sold many times, and each time he is enslaved to backbreaking work on coconut plantations, with European masters, he escapes.
Finally he is owned by Bunster, a notoriously cruel German who has already killed three of his native wives. He enjoys tormenting Mauki, especially slaps with a shark-skin glove. But the blackwater fever sends him to his bed in weakness. Mauki removes all of his white skin with the glove and then takes his head, goes home to his own island, makes peace with the white companies, and rules in fat contentment with four wives, having fulfilled his destiny, meditating upon a blonde head. Who else at the turn of the century would write such story respecting Mauki’s dignity? Seriously?
It would have to have been Jack London. There just wasn’t anybody else from white America or Europe that was capable of crossing so many waters. Of course, it is fitting that Jack London is most famous for that classic of classics, The Call of the Wild, which is of course about finding yourself and finding your tribe, your mates.
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Beauty Ranch
© Adapted from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London_State_Historic_Park. Access date: 19 December 2025
Jack London State Historic Park was occupied by a winery called Kohler & Frohling. Jack London purchased the property when it was abandoned in 1905 with hopes of becoming a rancher. He named it Beauty Ranch. While London was there, he expanded the small cottage to 3,000 square feet and converted the stone house next to it into a study where London would write. Between 1909 and 1911, London bought more land to expand his ranch.
In 1910, he began work on his mansion on his ranch called the Wolf House. Jack and Charmian spent more than $80,000 in pre-World War I money on the house. It was to be 15,000 square feet, have custom made furniture and decorations, and feature a reflecting pool stocked with mountain bass. On August 22, 1913, while the Londons were away from their ranch, they received word that their new mansion was on fire. By the time they got there the building was completely overtaken by the fire, and it was too late to save the house. Needless to say, London was devastated after the fire burnt down the house.
On November 22, 1916, London died of a cause that is still disputed today. He wished to be cremated and have his ashes interred on the property. He also stated that he wanted to be buried near the pioneer children on a hill underneath a rock from the Wolf House, which was just down the road.
After Jack London died, his wife Charmian inherited the property. During that time she built a house on the land called the House of Happy Walls, which is a smaller version of the Wolf House. Charmian lived there until her death in 1955. Meanwhile, Jack's half-sister Eliza Shepard superintended Beauty Ranch until her own death in 1939; her grandson Milo Shepard later inherited the same role. Charmian died in 1955 and, by 1959, the land and its structures were given to the state of California with the help of Eliza's son Irving Shepard and his wife Mildred. The next year, 1960, the property was declared a California Historical Landmark and a National Historic Landmark in 1962. On September 24, 1960, the new state park hosted an opening dedication ceremony. Today, more than 800 acres of London's Beauty Ranch have been preserved. The site is owned by the California State Parks system.
One of the highlights of the Park is The Winery Cottage. It was the main living quarters throughout London's time on the ranch, and the location where many of his visitors stayed. London bought it in 1911 and expanded it later that year. London further expanded by adding a west wing to the cottage, which served as a study where he wrote many of his stories. London died in this cottage, on the sunporch, on November 22, 1916.
Another focal point of the Park is Charmain’s home. Charmian London constructed The House of Happy Walls in 1919, in memory of Jack. It is a smaller and a more formal version of the Wolf House, and much of its furniture was originally intended for use in the Wolf House. Charmian lived in The House of Happy Walls until her death in 1955. In her will, written in 1938, she asked that the various properties of Beauty Ranch become a museum open to the public but was especially concerned about the House of Happy Walls: "In case of my death, it is my wish that my home, 'House of Happy Walls' is not to be lived in by anyone except a caretaker. This building & its arrangements are peculiarly an expression of myself and its ultimate purpose is that of a museum to Jack London & myself. It can be used for the purpose of revenue." Today the building serves as the visitor center and a museum for Jack London State Historic Park.
Of course, one of the most famous attractions in the Park are the ruins of Wolf House. Wolf House is an unfinished property that was intended to be the main residence of the Londons. Construction on the 15,000 square foot house began in 1910. Its design included only materials native to the area, a reflecting pool stocked with mountain bass, and custom made furniture. The house was nearly complete in 1913, but before the Londons got to move in, the house burnt down on August 22 of that year. The ruins still stand today. Losses were estimated at $35,000 to $40,000 but the Londons collected only $10,000 in insurance claims. They pledged to rebuild the house and workers began drying redwood logs in preparation. Jack was in poor health, however, and he died in 1916 before the wood was ready. Construction halted with his death.
The ashes of both Jack and Charmian are buried on the property not far from the Wolf House. In accordance with his wishes, his ashes were laid next to some pioneer children, under a rock that belonged to the Wolf House. After Charmian's death in 1955, she was also cremated and then buried with her husband in the same simple spot that her husband chose.
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