Meet the writers: Jack London
Jack London [John Griffith London] (1876-1916) was born in San Francisco of an unmarried mother of wealthy background, Flora Wellman. His father may have been William Chaney, a journalist, lawyer, and major figure in the development of American astrology. Because Flora was ill, Jack was raised by an ex-slave, Virginia Prentiss, who would remain a major maternal figure while the boy grew up. Late in 1876, Flora married John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran.
As an adolescent, the boy adopted the name of Jack. He worked at various hard labor jobs, pirated for oysters on San Francisco Bay, served on a fish patrol to capture poachers, sailed the Pacific on a sealing ship, joined Kelly’s Army of unemployed working men, hoboed around the country, and returned to attend high school at age 19. In the process, he became acquainted with socialism and was known as the Boy Socialist of Oakland for his street corner oratory. He would run unsuccessfully several times on the socialist ticket as mayor. Always a prolific reader, he consciously chose to become a writer to escape from the horrific prospects of life as a factory worker. He studied other writers and began to submit stories, jokes, and poems to various publications, mostly without success.
Spending the winter of 1897 in the Yukon provided the metaphorical gold for his first stories, which he began publishing in the Overland Monthly in 1899. From that point he was a highly disciplined writer, who would produce over fifty volumes of stories, novels, and political essays. Although The Call of the Wild (1903) brought him lasting fame, many of his short stories deserve to be called classics, as does his critique of capitalism and poverty in The People of the Abyss (1903), and his stark discussion of alcoholism in John Barleycorn (1913). London’s long voyage (1907-09) across the Pacific in a small boat provided material for books and stories about Polynesian and Melanesian cultures. He was instrumental in breaking the taboo over leprosy and popularizing Hawaii as a tourist spot.
London was among the most publicized figures of his day, and he used his fame to endorse his support of socialism and the women’s suffrage cause. He was among the first writers to work with the movie industry, and saw a number of his novels made into films. His novel The Sea-Wolf became the basis for the first full-length American movie. He was also one of the first celebrities to use his endorsement for commercial products in advertising, including dress suits and grape juice.
Because he was an autodidact, London’s ideas lacked consistency and precision. For example, he clearly accepted the Social Darwinism and scientific racism prevalent during his time, yet he seem troubled that the “inevitable white man,” as he called him, would destroy the rich cultures of various native groups he had encountered over the years. Although he supported women’s suffrage and created some of the most independent and strong female characters in American fiction, he was patriarchal toward his two wives and two daughters. His socialism was fervent, but countered by his strong drive toward individualism and capitalist success. These contradictory themes in his life and writing make him a difficult figure to reduce to simple terms.
Often troubled by physical ailments, during his thirties London developed kidney disease of unknown origin. He died of renal failure on November 22, 1916. Because his writings were translated in several languages, he remains more widely read in some countries outside of the United States than in his home country. Following London’s death, for a number of reasons a biographical myth developed in which he has been portrayed as an alcoholic womanizer who committed suicide. Recent scholarship based upon firsthand documents challenges this caricature. But its persistence has resulted in neglect of his full literary ouevre and his significance as a seminal figure in turn-of-the-century social history.
One of the most famous Irish writers ever, James Joyce was born in 1882, the eldest of ten surviving children. He was educated in the finest schools in Dublin before going on to University College.
With the start of World War One, Joyce and his family were forced to leave Trieste and arrived in Zurich where they lived for the duration of the war. The family had little money, relying on subventions from friends and family. After the War, the poet Ezra Pound persuaded him to come to Paris for a while, and Joyce stayed for the next twenty years. The publication of Ulysses in serial form in the American journal The Little Review was suspended in 1921 when a court banned it as obscene. For a while it looked as though Ulysses would never be published, but, in July 1920, Joyce had met Sylvia Beach, an American expatriate living in Paris who owned and ran the bookshop Shakespeare & Co - and she offered to publish the novel. On 2nd February 1922, Joyce’s fortieth birthday, the first edition of Ulysses was published.
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“I have never met a boy who so persistently writes the exact opposite of what he means,” a teacher once wrote in the young Roald Dahl’s report card. “He seems incapable of marshaling his thoughts on paper.” From such inauspicious beginnings emerged an immensely successful author whom The Evening Standard would one day dub “one of the greatest children’s writers of all time.”
In 1953, Dahl married the actress Patricia Neal; two of his early children’s books, James and the Giant Peach (1961) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) grew out of the bedtime stories he made up for their children. Elaine Moss, writing in the Times, called the latter “the funniest children’s book I have read in years; not just funny but shot through with a zany pathos which touches the young heart.” Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a colossal hit. A film version starring Gene Wilder was released in 1971 (as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory), while in 2005, Johnny Depp played Willie Wonka in a new version of the famous book. James and the Giant Peach was made into a movie in 1996.
Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most important American writers, and many scholars consider him to be the Father of the Short Story form. 