Jack London, in his short life of 40 years, experienced more adventures, endured more hardships and traveled more widely than most people. 

His philosophy of life was expressed to a reporter shortly before his death in 1916:

"I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze 
than it should be stifled by dry rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor,
every atom of me in magnificent glow,
than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time"

Jack London  (1876 - 1916)

 Jack London was first attracted to the Sonoma Valley by its magnificent natural landscape. He had fought his way up out of the factories and waterfront dives of West Oakland to become one of the highest paid, most popular and prolific writers of his day. Although he had sailed the world over, this gentle landscape made him feel at home and anchored in the land.

The author was born on January 12, 1876. By age 30, London was internationally famous for Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea Wolf, (1904) and other literary and journalistic accomplishments. Though he wrote passionately about the great questions of life and death and the struggle to survive with dignity and integrity, he also sought peace and quiet inspiration. His stories of high adventure were based on his own experiences at sea, in Alaska, or in the fields and factories of California. His writings appealed to millions worldwide.

Jack London was also widely known for his personal exploits. He was a colorful, controversial personality, often in the news. Generally fun loving, he was quick to side with the underdog against injustice of any kind. An eloquent public speaker, he was much sought after as a lecturer on socialism and other economic and political topics. Most people considered London a living symbol of rugged individualism, a man whose fabulous success was not due to special favor of any kind, but to a combination of immense mental ability and vitality.

Strikingly handsome, full of laughter, restless and courageous, always eager for adventure, Jack London was one of the most romantic figures of this time.

He ascribed his worldwide literary success largely to hard work - to "dig", as he put it. Between 1900 and 1916, he completed more than 50 friction and nonfiction books, hundreds of short stories and numerous articles. Several of the books and many of the short stories are classics and still popular; some have been translated into as many as 70 languages. Among his most well-known books are Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea Wolf, Martin Eden.

A few of the colorful covers of first edition books are reproduced here.

1902	1902	1903	1904	1905
1905	1906	1906	1909	1909
1911	1911	1911	1913	1916

In addition to his many commitments, London carried on voluminous correspondence (he received some 10,000 letters per year), read proofs of his work as it went to press, and negotiated with his agents and publishers. He spent time overseeing construction of his custom-built sailing ship, the Snark (1906 - 1907); the construction of his dream house, Wolf House (1910 - 1913); and the operation of his farm, Beauty Ranch, after 1911.

The natural beauty of Sonoma Valley was not lost on Jack London. The magnificent vistas and rolling hills of Glen Ellen were an ideal place for Jack and Charmian London to relax and enjoy the natural life. "When I first came here, tired of cities and people, I settled down on a little farm ... 130 acres of the most beautiful, primitive land to be found in California." Though the farm was badly run down, he reveled in its natural beauty.

"All I wanted," he said later, "was a quiet place in the country to write and loaf in and get out of Nature that something which we all need, only the most of us don't know it." Soon, however, he was busy buying farm equipment and livestock for his "mountain ranch."

He began work on a new barn and started planning a fine new house. "This is to be no summer residence proposition," he wrote to his publisher in June 1905, "but a home all the year round. I am anchoring good and solid, and anchoring for keeps."

Living and owning land near Glen Ellen was a way of escaping from Oakland - from the city way of life he called "the man-trap." But, restless and eager for foreign travel and adventure, he decided to build a ship, the Snark, and go sailing around the world - exploring writing, adventuring - enjoying the "big moments of living" that he craved and that would give him still more material to write about.

The voyage, which was to last seven years and take Jack and Charmian around the world, lasted just 27 months and took them only as far as the South Pacific and Australia. Discouraged by health problems and heartbroken about having to abandon the trip and sell the Snark, London returned to the ranch in Glen Ellen.

Between 1909 and 1911 he bought more land, and in 1911 he moved from Glen Ellen to a small ranch house in the middle of his holdings. On horseback he explored every canyon, glen and hilltop. He threw himself into a farming style of the period, termed scientific agriculture, as one of the few justifiable, basic and idealistic ways of making a living. A significant portion of his later writing - Burning Daylight (1910), Valley of the Moon (1913) and Little Lady of the Big House (1916) was about the simple pleasures of country life, the satisfaction of making a living from the land and remaining close to nature.

Jack and Charmian London's dream house began to take shape early in 1911 when a well-known San Francisco architect, Albert Farr, created the drawings and sketches for Wolf House. Farr then supervised the early stages of construction of a grand house that was to remain standing for a thousand years.

By August 1913, London had spent about $80,000, and the project was nearly complete. On August 22, final cleanup got underway, and plans were laid for moving the Londons specially designed, custom-built furniture and other personal belongings into the mansion. That night at 2 a.m., word came that the house was burning. By the time the Londons arrived on the scene, the house was ablaze, the roof had collapsed and even a stack of lumber some distance away was burning. Nothing could be done.

London looked at the fire philosophically, but the loss was a crushing financial blow and the end of a long-cherished dream. Rumors abounded about the cause of the fire. In 1995 a group of forensic fire experts visited the site, concluding that the fire had resulted from spontaneous combustion in a pile of linseed oil-soaked rags left by workers. London planned to rebuild Wolf House, but at the time of his death in 1916 the house remained as it stands today, the stark but eloquent vestige of a shattered dream.

The loss of Wolf house left London depressed, but he forced himself to go back to work. He added a new writer's study to the ranch house he had occupied since 1911.

Occasionally London went to New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles on business. He spent time living and working aboard his 30-foot yawl, the Roamer, which he sailed around San Francisco Bay and nearby Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

In 1914 he was a war correspondent in Mexico, covering the role of U.S. troops and Navy ships in the Villa-Carranza revolt.

In 1915 and again in 1916, Charmian persuaded him to spend time in Hawaii, where London seemed better able to relax and more willing to take care of himself. But his greatest satisfaction came from his ranch activities. His ambitious plans to expand the ranch and increase its productivity kept him in debt and under pressure to write as fast as he could, even though it might mean sacrificing quality in favor of quantity.

When his doctors urged him to change his work habits and his diet, stop all use of alcohol and get more exercise, he refused. If anything, the pressure of his financial commitments to helping friends and relatives and his increasingly severe health problems only made him dream larger dreams and work harder and faster.

On November 22, 1916, 40-year-old Jack London died of gastrointestinal uremic poisoning. He had been suffering from a variety of ailments, including a kidney condition, but up to the last day of his life, he was full of bold plans and boundless enthusiasm for the future. Words of grief poured into the telegraph office in Glen Ellen from all over the world.

"No writer, unless it were Mark Twain, ever had a more romantic life than Jack London. The untimely death of this most popular of American fictionists has profoundly shocked a world that expected him to live and work for many years longer." (Ernest J. Hopkins in the San Francisco Bulletin, December 2, 1916).

Jack London was a prolific writer.  A complete list of his books can be found here.

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