Several years after Jack London’s death, his wife Charmian released a 2-volume biography of his life. Volume I starts with the origins of his parents, John and Flora, and covers Jack’s childhood and early life growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area. It also covers his oyster pirating, Klondike trips, and time spent riding the railroads. The book is full of his letters to Cloudesley Johns, Anna Strunsky, and others. The first volume ends with his voyage to Asia to cover the Japanese-Russian War. Volume II starts with his return from Korea after war-reporting and his divorce from his first wife. It covers their trip on the Snark and trips to New York and around Cape Horn. The 'bad year' when his house burns is described in detail, as is a return to Hawaii and the start of World War I. The volume ends with Jack's death in 1916.

Raised in poverty as an illegitimate child, Jack London dropped out of school to support his mother, working in mind-deadening jobs that would foster a lifelong interest in socialism. Brilliant and self-taught, he haunted California's waterside bars, brawling with drunken sailors and learning about love from prostitutes. His lust for adventure took him from the beaches of Hawaii to the gold fields of Alaska, where he experienced firsthand the struggles for survival he would later immortalize in classics like White Fang and The Call of the Wild. A hard-drinking womanizer with children to support, Jack London was no stranger to passion when he met and married Charmian Kittredge, the love of his life. Despite his adventurous past, London had never before met a woman like Charmian; she adored fornication and boxing, and willingly risked life and limb to sail and explore. She typed his manuscripts while he churned out novels, serving as his inspiration and his critic. Lover, fighter, and onetime hobo, Jack London lived large and died before he was forty. This is a rare biography, from bestselling historian Alex Kershaw, that proves the truth can be more fascinating--and a far greater adventure--than a fiction.

Jack London has been a bestselling author for over one hundred years. In his short life (1876–1916), he wrote twenty-five novels, and dozens of short stories, plays, and essays. Today he is recognized as a forerunner of such literary giants as Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Jack Kerouac. Author of a number of well-known, to say nothing of well-loved, stories in our literary canon (White Fang, The Call of the Wild, and The Sea Wolf, to name just three), London also worked as a day laborer, Alaskan gold rush prospector, and seaman. He was also an adventurer, journalist, celebrity, polemicist, and drunk. Illustrated throughout with drawings, facsimile pages from his works, and contemporary photographs, many taken by London himself, An Autobiography of Jack London is a revealing portrait of this complicated and fascinating man in his own words, and is largely composed of excerpts from his memoirs: The Road, John Barleycorn, and The Cruise of the Snark. More than a mere biographical summary of a man's life, An Autobiography of Jack London aims to give the reader real insight into the character and personality of this uniquely American literary icon.

"The first authorized biography of a great American novelist"--

The world knows Jack London as awriter who lived his own thrilling,real-life adventures. But there areparts of his life that have remainedhidden for many years, things even he couldn’tset down in writing. Terrifying, mysterious,bizarre, and magical —these are the SecretJourneys of Jack London. We meet Jack at age seventeen, followingthousands of men and women into the YukonTerritory in search of gold. For Jack, the journeyholds the promise of another kind of fortune:challenge and adventure. But what he finds inthe wild north is something far more sinisterthan he could have ever imagined: kidnappingand slavery, the murderous nature of desperatemen, and, amidst it all, supernatural beasts ofthe wilderness that prey upon the weakness inmen’s hearts. Jack’s survival will depend on hisability to quell the demons within himself asmuch as those without. Acclaimed authors Christopher Goldenand Tim Lebbon, along with illustrator GregRuth, have crafted a masterful tale bothclassic and contemporary, a gripping originalstory of the paranormal in the tradition ofthe great Jack London.