Jack London was an American novelist and journalist who grew up in poverty in Oakland, California, worked as an oyster pirate, sailor, and labourer before educating himself and becoming one of the most commercially successful writers of his era. His experiences in the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897 gave him material for his most celebrated works — The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906). A committed socialist and prolific writer, he died at forty from kidney disease, having written over fifty books.
