"The past two decades have seen an outpouring of new scholarship around the world on American writer Jack London (1876-1916), author of such eternal classics as The Call of the Wild (1903), now translated into over 80 languages; The Sea Wolf (1904); and White Fang (1905). Earle Labor and Jeanne Campbell Reesman significantly advance the rising tide of critical interest with this illuminating, beautifully written, and appropriately adventurous new update of Labor's 1974 study. Reading many overlooked yet masterful stories and revealing the deep ties among London's times and his life, beliefs, and writings, the authors apply new critical approaches to his narrative structure and style and move beyond the misconceptions that have limited appreciation of the great short story writer, novelist, journalist, adventurer, socialist, and undeterrable individualist.".

Jack London has long been recognized as one of the most colorful figures in American literature. He is America's most widely translated author (into more than 80 languages), and although his works have been neglected until recently by academic critics in the United States, he is finally winning recognition as a major figure in American literary history. The breadth and depth of new critical study of London's work in recent decades attest to his newfound respectability. London criticism has moved beyond the traditional concerns of realism and naturalism as well as beyond a timeworn biographical focus to engage such theoretical approaches as race, gender, class, post-structuralism, and new historicism. The range and intellectual energy of the essays collected here give the reader a new sense of London's richness and variety, especially his treatment of diverse cultures. Having in the past focused more on London's personal "world," we are now afforded an opportunity to look more closely a

Alfred Kazin has aptly remarked that "the greatest story Jack London ever wrote was the story he lived." Newsboy, factory "work beast," gang member, hobo, sailor, Klondike argonaut, socialist crusader, war correspondent, utopian farmer, and world-famous adventurer: London is the closest thing America has had to a literary folk hero. His writing itself is concerned with nothing less than the largest questions and the grandest themes: What does it mean to be a human being in the natural world? What debts do human beings owe each other - and to all their fellow creatures? This collection places London, at last, securely within the American literary pantheon. It includes the complete novel The Call of the Wild; such famous stories as "Love of Life," "To Build a Fire," and "All Gold Canyon"; journalism, political writings, literary criticism, and selected letters.

Describes the adventurous life of the great American author, who spent time as a hobo, a sailor, a gold prospector, and an oyster pirate before penning such classics as "The Call of the Wild" and "White Fang."

"Story of a Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan", "The White Silence", "To The Man On Trail", "In a Far Country", "An Odyssey of the North", "Semper Idem", "The Law of Life", "A Relic of the Pliocene", "Nam-Bok the Unveracious", "The One Thousand Dozen", "To Build a Fire", "Moon-Face", "Batard", "The Story of Jees Uck", "The League of the Old Men", "Love of Life", "The Sun-Dog Trail", "All Gold Canyon", "A Day's Lodging", "The Apostate", "The Wit of Porportuk", "The Unparalleled Invasion", "To Build a Fire (1908)", "The House of Pride", "The House of Mapuhi", "The Chinago", "Lost Face", "Koolau the Leper", "Chun ah Chun", "The Heathern", "Mauki", "The Strength of the Strong", "South of the Slot", "Samuel", "A Piece of Steak", "The Madness of Jahn Harned", "The Night-Born", "War", "Told in the Drooling Ward", "Wonder of Woman", "The Red One", "On the Makaloa Mat", "The Tears of Ah Kim", "Shin Bones", "When Alice Told Her Soul", "Like Argus of the Ancient Times", "The Princess", "The Water Ba