London, Jack

1876 – He was born on the 12th day of January this year in San Francisco, USA.

1885 – He found and read Ouida’s long Victorian novel Signa, which describes an unschooled Italian peasant child who achieves fame as an opera composer. He credited this as the seed of his literary aspiration.

1893 – He signed on to the sealing schooner Sophia Sutherland, bound for the coast of Japan. When he returned, the country was in the grip of the panic of ‘93 and Oakland was swept by labor unrest.

1894 – He spent thirty days for vagrancy in the Erie County Penitentiary at Buffalo.

1897 – He and his brother-in-law, James Shepard, sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush where he would later set his first successful stories.

1900 – He married Bess Maddern on April 7 of this year; his work “The Son of the Wolf” was published too.

1904 – He and his wife Bess negotiated the terms of a divorce, and the decree was granted on November 11 of this year.

1906 - He published in Collier’s magazine his eyewitness report of the big earthquake.

1910 - Jack London purchased a 1,000 acre (4 km²) ranch in Glen Ellen, Sonoma County, California on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain, for $26,000.

1916 – He died this year.

• "The scab is a traitor to his God, his mother, and his class."
• "The proper function of man is to live - not to exist."
• "I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
• "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
• "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."