Jack London

Labor, Earle

ISBN 10: 0374178488 / ISBN 13: 9780374178482

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013

About this Item

Item in acceptable condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc.

Seller Inventory # 00102507064

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Jack London
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374178488
• ISBN 13: 9780374178482
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Acceptable

About this title

Synopsis

A revelatory look at the life of the great American author―and how it shaped his most beloved works



Jack London was born a working class, fatherless Californian in 1876. In his youth, he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling West Coast―an oyster pirate, a hobo, a sailor, and a prospector by turns. He spent his brief life rapidly accumulating the experiences that would inform his acclaimed bestselling books The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf.

The bare outlines of his story suggest a classic rags-to-riches tale, but London the man was plagued by contradictions. He chronicled nature at its most savage, but wept helplessly at the deaths of his favorite animals. At his peak the highest paid writer in the United States, he was nevertheless forced to work under constant pressure for money. An irrepressibly optimistic crusader for social justice and a lover of humanity, he was also subject to spells of bitter invective, especially as his health declined. Branded by shortsighted critics as little more than a hack who produced a couple of memorable dog stories, he left behind a voluminous literary legacy, much of it ripe for rediscovery.

In Jack London: An American Life, the noted Jack London scholar Earle Labor explores the brilliant and complicated novelist lost behind the myth―at once a hard-living globe-trotter and a man alive with ideas, whose passion for seeking new worlds to explore never waned until the day he died. Returning London to his proper place in the American pantheon, Labor resurrects a major American novelist in his full fire and glory.

About the Author

Earle Labor is the acknowledged major authority on the novelist Jack London and the curator of the Jack London Museum and Research Center in Shreveport. He is also Emeritus Professor of American Literature at Centenary College of Louisiana.