Jack London

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Jack London
Jack London was born on January 12, 1876. He was born in San Francisco, California. He returned home, after working in Klondike, and began publishing his stories. A few of his stories placed him as one of the most popular American authors of his time. These stories included The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Martin Eden. Other than being a writer, London was a journalist and an outspoken socialist.
Jack London’s real name is John Griffith Chaney. He started calling himself Jack as a boy. His parents were Flora Wellman, who was an unwed mother, and William Chaney, who was a journalist, pioneering leader in the new field of American astrology, and a journalist. His mother married a man named John London and his father was never a part of his life. His stepfather was a war veteran and he moved jack and his mother all around the Bay Area before settling in Oakland.
Jack grew up in a working-class and carved out his own life as a teen. He would ride trains, work on a sealing ship on the Pacific, shovel coal, pirate oysters, and found employment in a cannery. He would be at the library in his free time, reading travel books and novels. He began writing in 1893 when he was 17. He went on a sea voyage and a typhoon nearly took him and his crew out. When he got back he told his mother about his adventure and she told him to write about it for a writing contest. He submitted his story and won the 25$ prize. He even beat college students from Stanford and Berkley.
After London won that contest, he decided that he would be a short story writer. The only problem he had with being a short story writer was that he couldn’t find anyone to publish him. By the time he was 22 he still didn’t have a publisher but he still staye...

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...nese War in 1904 for Hearst papers.
London had two daughters, Joan and Bess. He married is wife, Bess Maddern, in 1900. The reason London and Bess got married was because they figured they could have strong, healthy kids together. Their marriage was not out of love. They divorced in 1905, shortly after they were married. London remarried to a woman named Charmian Kittredge, and she is the woman that he would be with the rest of his life.
For the last few years of his life, he had a few health problems. These problems included a kidney disease that ended his life. He ended up dying in a California ranch that him and Charmian owned on November 22, 1916.

Works Cited

"Jack London Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, 2013.
Web. 02 Mar. 2014.
Shmoop Editorial Team. "To Build a Fire." Shmoop.com. Shmoop
University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 03 Mar. 2014.

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