by Janet Grischy

Created on: March 03, 2008   Last Updated: March 15, 2009

Jack London was the premier adventure writer of his time. He made a very good living at writing, and was one of the first to do so, by chronicling a life of vivd adventure and deep thought. All of his work is still read, and much of it is still in print. His life was short, and in many ways unhappy, but his works will last beyond our lifetimes.

Jack London's first sloop was the Razzle Dazzle. At age 15 he bought it in an Oakland bar for $300. He used it to steal oysters on San Francisco bay until the ship went aground and burned to the waterline. Then he became a deputy in the California Fish Patrol, and hunted oyster pirates. Years later, he would publish a book called Tales of the Fish Patrol.

At 17 he shipped out to Japan, Hawaii, and the Bering Sea, on the Sophie Sutherland.The crew hunted whales and seal, and Jack London was a boatpuller, one of the men who rowed the small boats that chased the whales. He would use these adventures in The Sea Wolf, his story of Wolf Larson, the brutal captain with a soul. The clean-lined Sophie Sutherland served as the model for Larsen's beautiful schooner, The Ghost.

Jack London was a hobo after that, briefly a student at the University of California at Berkeley, and worked long hours for low pay in factories. He went to Alaska in the gold rush. Unsuccessful, he returned home to write. He endured three years of rejection, going hungry and pawning his belongings. His first real writing success came at 24, with the publication in 1900 of Son of the Wolf. Call of the Wild was published in 1903 and the Sea Wolf in 1904. These books were fabulously successful.

He divorced his first wife, deserting his two daughters as his own father had abandoned him. In 1905, he married a woman who shared his sense of adventure, the day after his divorce was final. They honeymooned in Jamaica and Cuba. On his first honeymoon, the newlyweds had bicycled in Santa Cruz, a seaside town near San Francisco.

Jack London bought a ranch, and began to improve it. Always, he wrote.

In 1906 he commissioned the building of the ketch Snark, and in 1907 he and his wife Charmian set out to sail around the world. The voyage was planned to last 7 years, but did not. After 27 months, Jack had surgery in Sydney for a double fistula and was treated for several tropical illnesses. Jack and Charmian gave up the voyage, and the Snark was sold. They returned to California where Jack would write of ranch life. In these stories, Charmian is the model for his fictional heroines.

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