The wide world of Jack London

Author

Howard Lawrence Lachtman, University of the Pacific

Date of Award

1974

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

English

First Advisor

Charles Clerc

First Committee Member

Maurice L. McCullen

Second Committee Member

Robert T. Knighton

Third Committee Member

R. Coke Wood

Fourth Committee Member

Arlen. J. Hansen

Abstract

The high apostle of the adventure tale in the Strenuous Age, Jack London has never really relinquished the popularity which made him before his death one of the best known and, most widely read writers in the world. It is true that more than one pontiff of literary taste has consigned him to the same, "obsolete" file that contains the remains of Richard Harding Davis, David Graham Phillips, William Sidney Porter, but such reports of London's demise have undoubtedly been premature. Indeed, the contemporary momentum of Jack London studies affords excellent evidence of the critical rediscovery of an American legend.

Critical approaches to Jack London have necessarily been as eclectic as the man himself. Interpreters have explored London's various roles as a fantasy writer, sociologist, socialist, explorer, reporter, agrarian, ecologist, and Jungian. These specialized inquiries have led to the reconsideration of London's place in American literature, but that judgement is complicated by the fact that no complete edition of London's works exists and that no reader's guide has been established for the fifty-five books which presently comprise the London canon.

To survey and categorize the body of Jack London's work is no simple task, but the omission makes minimal our ability properly to assess the writer's contribution to American ideas and literature. Jack London was a remarkably gifted and versatile journeyman who could produce top-grade work in a variety of literary forms, but the sheer number of his works and the elasticity of forms he embraced throughout his career have frustrated his bibliographers, his biographers, and his critics.

The present study attempts in part to remedy the absence of a comprehensive reader's guide to Jack London's literary world. It is a survey of the fifty-five major editions of Jack London's works from his first published book. The Son of the Wolf (1900) to the recently published drama, Gold (1972). Essays, journalism, novels, plays, and stories are listed with appropriate bibliographical references and brief commentaries. Individual works are arranged by chapter for ease of reference according to their collective subject or theme: The South Seas, Alaska, Autobiography, Social Justice, The Sea, and Fantasy Fiction. In this manner, the writer's world is opened to exploration and definition, his work both comprehensively surveyed and particularly scrutinized. Such a compilation, it is hoped, will establish the bibliographical-critical guide required at the present time when acceleration of London research and scholarship promises to bring to an end the long neglect of a legendary American writer. At any event, the emergence of Jack London as a particularly amenable and invigorating new figure for academic study now seems assured.

Pages

354

Recommended Citation

Lachtman, Howard Lawrence. (1974). The wide world of Jack London. University of the Pacific, Dissertation. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/1849