White Fang - Jack London

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Résumé :
?White Fang? is a 1906 novel by American writer Jack London that tells the tale of a wild wolfdog who resides in the Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories of Canada during the Klondike Gold Rush in the 1890s. Presented from the four-legged protagonist's point of view, it is the charming story of White Fang's journey from the wilderness to domestication. John Griffith London (1876 ? 1916), commonly known as Jack London, was an American journalist, social activist, and novelist. He was an early pioneer of commercial magazine fiction, becoming one of the first globally-famous celebrity writers who were able to earn a large amount of money from their writing. London is famous for his contributions to early science fiction and also notably belonged to The Crowd, a literary group an Francisco known for its radical members and ideas. Other notable works by this author include: ?Martin Eden? (1909), ?The Kempton-Wace Letters? (1903), and ?The Call of the Wild? (1903). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

Biographie:
Jack London

John Griffith Jack London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876 - November 22, 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone.

Some of his most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories To Build a Fire, An Odyssey of the North, and Love of Life. He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as The Pearls of Parlay and The Heathen, and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf.

London was part of the radical literary group, The Crowd, in San Francisco, and a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers. He wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction expos? The People of the Abyss, and The War of the Classes.

Jack London's mother, Flora Wellman, was the fifth and youngest child of Pennsylvania Canal builder Marshall Wellman and his first wife, Eleanor Garrett Jones. Marshall Wellman was descended from Thomas Wellman, an early Puritan settler in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[7] Flora left Ohio and moved to the Pacific coast when her father remarried after her mother died. In San Francisco, Flora worked as a music teacher and spiritualist, claiming to channel the spirit of a Sauk chief Black Hawk.

Biographer Clarice Stasz and others believe London's father was astrologer William Chaney.[9] Flora Wellman was living with Chaney in San Francisco when she became pregnant. Whether Wellman and Chaney were legally married is unknown. Most San Francisco civil records were destroyed by the extensive fires that followed the 1906 earthquake; nobody knows what name appeared on her son's birth certificate. Stasz notes that in his memoirs, Chaney refers to London's mother Flora Wellman as having been his wife; he also cites an advertisement in which Flora called herself Florence Wellman Chaney.

According to Flora Wellman's account, as recorded in the San Francisco Chronicle of June 4, 1875, Chaney demanded that she have an abortion. When she refused, he disclaimed responsibility for the child. In desperation, she shot herself. She was not seriously wounded, but she was temporarily deranged. After giving birth, Flora turned the baby over for care to Virginia Prentiss, an African-American woman and former slave. She was a major maternal figure throughout London's life. Late in 1876, Flora Wellman married John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran, and brought her baby John, later known as Jack, to live with the newly married couple. The family moved around the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Oakland, where London completed public grade school.

Sommaire:
Jack London was a social activist, war correspondent, and the highest paid novelist of his day. His early poverty, love for animals, and travel adventures are all reflected in his twenty-three novels and hundreds of short stories, poems, and essays. In addition to The Call of the Wild, he is best known for his novels White Fang and The Sea Wolf and short stories like To Build a Fire....