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Jack London's Literary Hero

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HIS LITERARY CAREER Jack London has been recognized as one of the dynamic figures in American Literature. Sailor, hobo, Klondike Argonaut, social crusader, war correspondent, scientific farmer, self-made millionaire, global traveler, and adventurer. London captured the popular imagination world wide as much through his literary efforts. But it was the quality of his writing, more than his personal legend that won him a prominent place in World Literature. London distinguished him as one of the most widely translated American Authors. London was a writer of extraordinary vitality. He pioneered in the Literature of social protest and apocalypse as well as in the fiction of escape and adventure. (Dictionary of literary biography.12. p. 352) …show more content…

E. F. Edge, in the Boston Evening Transcript, recommended it as a novel “for all thoughtful readers,” especially praising the author for his realistic treatment of industrial turmoil and for his subordination of socialism to art. The Athenaeum observed that London had grasped “the essential traits of humanity” in this “essentially American” novel. (DLB.Vol.12. p.370). The Star Rover (1915), the story of the Professor Darrell standing convinced of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in San Quentin. The Star Rover was London’s last attempt at a series work. The Little Lady of the Big House (1916), London’s third agrarian novel, was a less happy work. This novel replete with references to nature, but with virtually no naturalism, is a mythopoeia fantasy beginning in the morning of the world and concluding with the celebration of the death of war and the triumph of the acorn planters, incarnated in red one, the philosopher agrarian. (DLB.Vol.12. …show more content…

One notices the harsh tone of London’s Polemies. Our Statesmen sell themselves and their country for gold. The world of graft! The world of betrayal! ‘The Yellow peril,’ the economic issues of Asia were described in almost purely racist terms. In The Cruise of the Snarky (1911), London explains, “life has rotted away in this wonderful garden spot, where the climate is as delightful and healthful as any to be found in this world. Note alone were the types physically magnificent they were pure, when one considers the situations, one is almost driven to the conclusion that the white race flourishes on impurity and

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