Things you may not know about Jack London

Jack London is a writer whose books still hold the shelves. Less well known: he bought texts from other writers and was credibly accused of plagiarism more than once.

Things you may not know

1. 1.He nearly was not born at all. When his mother's husband learned she was pregnant, he demanded an abortion. The despair was enough that she tried to take her own life. The boy was born anyway, in January 1876, and was promptly given to another family to raise.
2. 2.In 1877 his mother turned her life around. She divorced and remarried, this time a man considerably older. The stepfather took the boy in and made him a favourite. Jack thought of him as his real father and refused to believe the truth when he was finally told.
3. 3.The mother was the main breadwinner because the stepfather had poor health. She was rarely home. Despite the poverty, the household had what it needed for living and learning, and at four Jack could already read and play the piano.
4. 4.He started earning a living at ten. First selling newspapers, then a cannery, then a night-shift cleaner at an amusement park. Whatever hours were free went into books.
5. 5.As a teenager he ran with other boys raiding the oyster beds set by local fishing companies. Decent money for a while, until he switched sides and took a job as a patrol inspector catching the same kind of poachers.

1. 1.His mother knew about the reading and pushed him to enter a literary competition. He went in reluctantly — he was old enough to think reading was no way to earn a living. He won, and took home 25 dollars.
2. 2.Mass unemployment then left him without an income, and he became a tramp, begging for money like many other workers of his generation. After a month in jail he concluded that manual labour was not going to feed him and that he needed to live by his mind.
3. 3.On release he taught himself the high-school curriculum and got into university. He could not finish — the family still needed feeding. At twenty-one he set off for Alaska to try his luck in the gold rush. Alaska did not make him a millionaire. It did wreck his health.
4. 4.Back home, he started writing in earnest. The young writer's work was of little interest to newspapers and book publishers. He collected over six hundred rejection letters from major houses in a couple of years.
5. 5.In 1900 he married the widow of a university friend. The marriage was not a happy one but produced two daughters. He had wanted a son, and the marriage broke down quickly. By 1904 it was over, and for some time before that he was rarely home.
6. 6.He soon found a different match in Charmian Kittredge, who shared his appetite for adventure. Friends disapproved of the new connection. The couple were not too troubled — Charmian adored him and learned, for his sake, to sail a ship and to box, so she could keep him company in the ring.
7. 7.After the second marriage his career took off. He sold his work for large sums by the standards of the period. He became the first millionaire writer in the United States and the highest-paid worker in the country. Newspapers tracked his movements. With the years the stories got harder to produce, and at some point he began borrowing ideas from other writers, then buying drafts from beginners outright.
8. 8.In 1905 he poured his savings into a ranch. It ruined him. He threw himself into farm development and let the writing slide. Workers laughed at his agricultural ideas, but many of them would later prove sound. Jack London died at forty. He was buried beside the ranch that never had time to repay him.