Jack London
JACK LONDON was born, with the love of adventure in his veins, at San Francisco, January 12, 1870. He started his education at the University of California, but did not finish it there, for the strenuous life was to be his school, and all humanity were to be his teachers, any strange place his school-room. Now he was in the Klondike; now at sea before the mast; then he was in Japan and sealhunting in Bering Sea; again he was tramping through the United States and Canada, learning all he could of men and their ways; he was journalist and lecturer, war correspondent in the Russo-Japanese War, and ever and anon making those voyages which kept the eyes of the world upon him. How he broke into the realm of letters he has vividly described; his own great battle with John Barleycorn, told with unusual frankness, did a great deal to set the stage for John's present tragic plight; his own personality kept the great reading public as interested as did the creations of his imagination; his books came thick and fast, beginning with 1900, sometimes two and three a year. Naturally they were uneven, but through all his work glowed the genius of a born story-teller, a great heart, and a love for his fellows and their problems.
He was twice married, first to Bessie Maddern and second to Charmian Kittredge, who plays a large part in his later books. He died November 21, 1916.