Step inside the House of Happy Walls Museum for a fascinating exploration of Jack London’s photographic journey aboard the Snark.
Jack London always referred to The Cruise of the Snark (1911) as an “illustrated book.” The pictures were central to his authorial vision of the voyage to the South Pacific that he and Charmian London embarked on in April of 1907. Maddeningly, in the process of preparing the manuscript of The Cruise of the Snark for publication, Macmillan & Co. made a hash of the author’s design, misplacing some of the book’s 119 photographs and scrambling the captions Jack had so carefully assembled.
While Jay Williams, my co-editor for Volume 13 of Oxford UP’s Complete Works of Jack London, has been collating various iterations of the essays collected in The Cruise of the Snark to prepare a definitive copy- text, I’ve been trying to track down the original photographs for the book. The treasure hunt has proved more challenging—and surprising—than expected. The pictures, most by Jack with a few by Martin Johnson, the Snark’s young cook and engineer, are scattered among far-flung sources—beginning with Charmian London’s huge collection of photo albums at the Huntington Library and multiple binders of prints and negatives housed in the California State Parks collection at Sonoma Barracks. My search eventually took me to archives in Chanute, Kansas; Auckland, N.Z.; and the British Museum, for it turns out that there was another, unacknowledged contributor to Jack’s illustrated book.
Image credit: “The Polynesian Barge in Which We Were to Ride,” from The Cruise of the Snark by Jack London, 1911.
About the speaker: Amy Tucker
Amy Tucker is Professor Emerita of the English Department of Queens College, CUNY, where she taught American literature and cultural studies. She has published essays on art, travel and literature, and served as guest editor of a volume on Charmian London for Women’s Studies: An Inter-Disciplinary Journal. Her books include The Illustration of the Master: Henry James and the Magazine Revolution; Visual Literacy: Writing about Art; and, most recently, “I’m Used to Playing Lead”: Memoirs by Women in Jazz, to be brought out by Equinox in January, 2027. Tucker and Williams have received a two-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to work on their volume for The Complete Works of Jack London.
This event is part of a speaker series co-hosted by Jack London Park Partners and the Jack London Society, honoring the 150th anniversary of Jack London’s birth. JLPP is grateful for the support of the Jack London Society and its scholars in bringing this speaker series to life. Join us at Jack London State Historic Park throughout 2026 for a compelling lineup of speakers celebrating Jack London’s legacy.
Click here to learn more about the Jack London Society and the work they do to carry Jack’s legacy forward.
Date: Friday, November 6, 2026
Time: 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
Place: House of Happy Walls Museum, 2nd floor
Performance space can be reached by stairway only; for more information about access, please call (707) 938-5216.
Admission: $15 *Park entrance fee waived for this event.
Price: $15.00