This presentation is made with the object of making the audience to read at least one of works of Jack London.

Family

John Griffith London (1876-1916) was born in San Francisco of an unmarried mother of wealthy background, Flora Wellman. His father may have been William Chaney, a journalist, lawyer, and major figure in the development of American astrology. Late in 1876, Flora married John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran.

All his works are based on his life experience. He changed many places of employment starting by being ‘oyster pirate’. All these episodes of his life were somehow reflected in his works. In 1893 he was recruited as a sailor which effected him a lot. This first voyage was a base for some of his famous novels – ‘The Sea-wolf’ and ‘Martin Eden’. In the same year his first sketch ‘Typhoon off the Coast of Japan’ came out. He was even imprisoned and joined American Social party for a while.

AlaskaHis life extremely changed in 1897 when he yielded to Gold Rush and left to Alaska. Alaska hasn’t gave him gold, it’s done better – Alaska gave him characters of his future tales and novels. After having returned back from Alaska London has begun to write in a professional way. His first northern tales were published in 1899 and his first book – ‘Son of the wolf’ – was published in 1900. This northern experience gave us such collected stories as ‘God of his father’s’, ‘Children of the frost’, ‘Moonface’ and such novels as ‘Daughter of the shows’ and ‘White fang’. These works made him extremely popular. He worked about 17 hours a day and for all hid short career he wrote about 40 books.

SuccessAfter creating all these work he began to get about $70 000 for a novel, but was not enough for him. In 1904-05 he worked as war correspondent at Russo-Japanese war. Money helped him to make a world tour which he was dreaming about.

Here is the short list of his works:

War correspondents

The film follows the adventures of the writer-adventurer Jack London (Michael O'Shea) who was, among other things, oyster pirate, hobo, sailor, prospector and war correspondent.

Films

It’s known about one hundred films based on Jack London’s novels. Once he even played a role in first screening of his novel ‘The sea-wolf’. It was popular in the USSR to make these films:‘White fang’ , ‘’

Literature about Jack London

• Irving Stone – Sailor on Horseback (1938)• Will Bikov – On the track of Jack London• Alexandr Rosin – House of the Wolf

Jack London’s Lake is a lake in Magadan, one of the most beautiful lakes of Far East. Its name was given to it because of the book that was found on the shore of the lake, it was ‘Martin Eden’.According to another version, many geologists loved novels of Jack London and named this lake after him.

Quotations:

• Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest.

The Sea-Wolf" (1904)

• Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.

White Fang (1906)• Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but

sometimes, playing a poor hand well.As quoted in Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior (1991)

• Age is never so old as youth would measure it."The Wit of Porportuk" in The Best Short Stories of Jack London (1962)

• There are things greater than our wisdom, beyond our justice. The right and wrong of this we cannot say, and it is not for us to judge.

"An Odyssey of the North" in The Best Short Stories of Jack London (1962)

To sum up I can recommend to read such novels like ‘White Fang’, ‘Martin Eden’, ‘The hearts of three’, ‘Red Plague’, ‘Love of life’ and especially the short story ‘When gods laugh’.

Links:

World of Jack London

Anastasia Kryuchkova, 202