Jack London

The Passing of Marcus O'Brien is a short story written by Jack London. "It is the judgment of this court that you vamose the camp . . . in the customary way, sir, in the customary way." Judge Marcus O'Brien was absent-minded, and Mucluc Charley nudged him in the ribs. Marcus O'Brien cleared his throat and went on- "Weighing the gravity of the offence, sir, and the extenuating circumstances, it is the opinion of this court, and its verdict, that you be outfitted with three days' grub. That will do, I think."

"Flush of Gold" is a short story by Jack London. "Lon McFane was a bit grumpy, what of losing his tobacco pouch, or else he might have told me, before we got to it, something about the cabin at Surprise Lake. All day, turn and turn about, we had spelled each other at going to the fore and breaking trail for the dogs. It was heavy snowshoe work, and did not tend to make a man voluble, yet Lon McFane might have found breath enough at noon, when we stopped to boil coffee, with which to tell me. But he didn't. Surprise Lake? it was Surprise Cabin to me. I had never heard of it before. I confess I was a bit tired. I had been looking for Lon to stop and make camp any time for an hour; but I had too much pride to suggest making camp or to ask him his intentions; and yet he was my man, lured at a handsome wage to mush my dogs for me and to obey my commands. I guess I was a bit grumpy myself. He said nothing, and I was resolved to ask nothing, even if we tramped on all night".

Lost Face is a classic story by Jack London about a man out of place and out of time. Subienkow is a Polack, who in mid-1800's Russian America finds himself the second to last survivor of a group of Russian fur thieves who have just been defeated by liberators from the local tribe they have enslaved as forced labour. Now Subienkow faces a long, protracted and painful death unless he can come up with a plan for escape. Subienkow calls over the tribe's chief, Makamuk and he begins to barter. What follows is a power play between the two men, and Yakuga, a recently freed slave, who doubts the legitimacy of Subienkow's offer even as he begins to question the wisdom of his tribe's chief.

The story is told from the perspective of a scientist called Bassett, who is on an expedition in the jungle of Guadalcanal to collect butterflies. The "Red One" of the title refers to a giant red sphere, of apparently extraterrestrial origin, that the headhunting natives worship as their god and to which they perform human sacrifices. Bassett becomes obsessed with the Red One and in the end is sacrificed himself. The story's theme was suggested to London by his friend George Sterling: a message is sent from an alien civilization but is lost in the wilderness. There are parallels to Joseph Conrad's short novel Heart of Darkness. Critics have noted the possible influence of Carl Jung on the story, as London became aware of Jung's ideas at around the time of writing "The Red One" in 1916.

The People of the Abyss (1903) is a book by Jack London about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote this first-hand account after living in the East End (including the Whitechapel District) for several months, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. The conditions he experienced and wrote about were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor.

Humphrey Van Weyden becomes an unwilling participant in a tense shipboard drama. A deranged and abusive sea captain perpetrates a shipboard atmosphere of increasing violence that ultimately boils into mutiny, shipwreck, and a desperate confrontation. This 1904 maritime classic depicts the clash of materialistic and idealistic cultures with a mixture of gritty realism and sublime lyricism. Jack London was an American author who wrote The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea Wolf along with many other popular books. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first Americans to make a lucrative career exclusively from writing.

The Mutiny of the Elsinore is a novel by the American writer Jack London first published in 1914. After death of the captain, the crew of a ship split between the two senior surviving mates. During the conflict, the narrator develops as a strong character, rather as in The Sea-Wolf. It also includes some strong right views which were part of London's complex world-view. The novel is partially based on London's voyage around Cape Horn on the Dirigo in 1912. The character "De Casseres," who espouses nihilistic viewpoints similar to the ideas of French philosopher Jules de Gaultier, is based on London's real-life friend and journalist Benjamin De Casseres.

The story concerns a love triangle. The protagonist, Dick Forrest, is a rancher with a poetic streak (his "acorn song" recalls London's play, "The Acorn Planters"). His wife, Paula, is a vivacious, athletic, and sexually self-aware woman, who falls in love with Evan Graham, an old friend of her husband's. Unable to choose between the two men, she wounds herself mortally with a rifle in what her husband is certain is a suicide.

The novel is based on the (fictional) "Everhard Manuscript" written by Avis Everhard which she hid and which was subsequently found centuries later. In addition, this novel has an introduction and series of (often lengthy) footnotes written from the perspective of scholar Anthony Meredith. Meredith writes from around 2600 AD or 419 B. O. M. (the Brotherhood of Man). Jack London writes at two levels, often having Meredith condescendingly correcting the errors of Everhard yet, at the same time, exposing the often incomplete understanding of this distant future perspective.

The Sea-Wolf is a 1904 psychological adventure novel by American novelist Jack London. The book's protagonist, Humphrey van Weyden, is a literary critic who is a survivor of an ocean collision and who comes under the dominance of Wolf Larsen, the powerful and amoral sea captain who rescues him. The love element, with its absurd suppressions, and impossible proprieties, is awful."

The history of civilisation is a history of wandering, sword in hand, in search of food. In the misty younger world we catch glimpses of phantom races, rising, slaying, finding food, building rude civilisations, decaying, falling under the swords of stronger hands, and passing utterly away. Man, like any other animal, has roved over the earth seeking what he might devour; and not romance and adventure, but the hunger-need, has urged him on his vast adventures.

London, in his autobiographical novel John Barleycorn, describes how in his youth he bought a sloop called the Razzle Dazzle from an oyster pirate called French Frank. In The Cruise of the Dazzler, the captain of the Dazzler is known as French Pete, who, like French Frank, drinks to the success of business ventures. London himself became an oyster pirate.

A Son of the Sun is a 1912 novel by Jack London. It is set in the South Pacific at the beginning of the 20th century and consists of eight separate stories. David Grief is a forty-year-old English adventurer who came to the South seas years ago and became rich. As a businessman he owns offices in Sydney, but he is rarely there. Since his wealth spreads over a lot of islands, Grief has some adventures while going among these islands. London depicts the striking panorama of the South seas with adventurers, scoundrels, swindlers, pirates, and cannibals.

A young man in modern America is terrorized by visions of an earlier, primitive life. Across the enormous chasm of thousands of centuries, his consciousness has become entwined with that of Big-Tooth, an ancestor living at the dawn of humanity. Big-Tooth makes his home in Pleistocene Africa, a ferocious, fascinating younger world torn by incessant conflict between early humans and protohumans. Before Adam is a remarkable and provocative tale that thrust evolution further into the public spotlight in the early twentieth century and has since become a milestone of speculative fiction. The brilliance of the book lies not only in its telling but also in its imaginative projection of a mindset for early humans. Capitalizing on his recognized ability to understand animals, Jack London paints an arresting and dark portrait of how our distant ancestors thought about themselves and their world.

Living in Oakland at the beginning of the 20th century, Martin Eden struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances through an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, hoping to achieve a place among the literary elite. His principal motivation is his love for Ruth Morse. Because Eden is a rough, uneducated sailor from a working-class background 4] and the Morses are a bourgeois family, a union between them would be impossible unless and until he reached their level of wealth and refinement. Over a period of two years, Eden promises Ruth that success will come, but just before it does, Ruth loses her patience and rejects him in a letter, saying, "if only you had settled down .

The story is simple and immediately understandable, two gold prospectors are suffering from starvation as they trudge wearily across the frozen tundra of Canada to find food. One of the men is called Bill and the other, our protagonist, remains unnamed for the entirety of the story. Unfortunately for our man, starvation and exposure to the elements are the good news for him because he soon sprains an ankle and his dear friend Bill abandons him to his fate. Without bullets for his rifle, he marches towards an uncertain fate.

John Barleycorn is an autobiographical novel by Jack London dealing with his enjoyment of drinking and struggles with alcoholism. It was published in 1913. The title is taken from the British folksong "John Barleycorn". In this memoir, there are the themes of masculinity and male friendship. London discusses various life experiences he has had with alcohol, and at widely different stages in his life. Key stages are his late teen years when he earned money as a sailor and later in life when he was a wealthy, successful writer.

Jack London made a specialty of books about marvelous dogs. Jerry of the Islands tells the story of an Irish Terrier, a dog from the Southern seas, rather than the cold North. Jerry's life is colored by his experiences in the rough -- and sadly, racist -- land of Melanesia. First published in 1915, "Jerry of the Islands" tells the story of Jerry's narrow world, in which the dog has been born and raised to carry out the racist aims of his master, and his travels after that time.

"Dutch Courage and Other Stories" - by Jack London is a group of London's short stories originally published in 1922 which were never before published in book form. The book is especially suited to the boy reader. "Dutch Courage" from which the collection takes its name, is the story of two boys on Half-Dome in the Yosemite Valley.

The Call of the Wild is a novel by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a previously domesticated and even somewhat pampered dog named Buck, whose primordial instincts return after a series of events finds him serving as a sled dog in the treacherous, frigid Yukon during the days of the 19th century Klondike Gold Rushes. Published in 1903, The Call of the Wild is one of London's most-read books, and it is generally considered one of his best. Because the protagonist is a dog, it is sometimes classified as a juvenile novel, suitable for children, but it is dark in tone and contains numerous scenes of cruelty and violence. London followed the book in 1906 with White Fang, a companion novel with many similar plot elements and themes as The Call of the Wild, although following a mirror image plot in which a wild wolf becomes civilized by a mining expert from San Francisco named Weedon Scott.