JACK LONDON
American author (1876-1916)
Biography:
John Griffith, alias Jack London, was born in San Francisco the 12th January 1876. He was the illegitimate son of farmers and alternated his being sailor and cow-boy. Jack London narrates his own life in Martin Eden (1909), where the hero commits suicide after a crusade across the South Seas, prophetising the novelist's tragic ending. The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1907) --where adventure, animals and exploited working classes are main characters-- were really successful, yet on a misunderstanding basis. Jack London joint the Muckraker movement, signing letters for the revollution, but anyway he had Nietzche as master. Revolted by the social extreme poverty of his time, "the best paid writer in the world" did not hesitate and went to live in the slums of London in order to write The People of the Abyss (1903), based on London's observations of the slums of London and illustrated with photographs taken by himself and others. But his heroes stay alone and unsociable, since they keep an idealistic and romantic image of the New World. Jack London died in 1916, in California.
Jack London, author of illustrated works:
L'Appel de la forêt (The call of the wild), illustrated by Maurice de Becque, Crès, 1931
Les enfants du froid (Children of frost), illustrated by Yves Beaujard, Hachette, 1978.
L'appel de la forêt, illustrated by Tudor Banus, Gallimard, 1997.
Le Génie et la fée, illustrated by Lemoine, Calligram, 1992.
Croc-Blanc (White Fang), illustrated by Miles Hyman, Hachette, 1996.
Jack London on the Internet:
Site on Jack London (in English)