A prolific and enduringly popular author--and an icon of American fiction--Jack London is a rewarding choice for inclusion in classrooms from middle school to graduate programs. London's biography and the role played by celebrity have garnered considerable attention, but the breadth of his personal experiences and political views and the many historical and cultural contexts that shaped his work are key to gaining a nuanced view of London's corpus of works, as this volume's wide-ranging perspectives and examples attest. The first section of this volume, "Materials," surveys the many resources available for teaching London, including editions of his works, sources for his photography, and audiovisual aids. In part 2, "Approaches," contributors recommend practices for teaching London's works through the lenses of socialism and class, race, gender, ecocriticism and animal studies, theories of evolution, legal theory, and regional history, both in frequently taught texts such as The Call of the Wild, "To Build a Fire," and Martin Eden and in his lesser-known works.

With his novels, journalism, short stories, political activism, and travel writing, Jack London established himself as one of the most prolific and diverse authors of the twentieth century. Covering London's biography, cultural context, and the various genres in which he wrote, The Oxford Handbook of Jack London is the definitive reference work on the author.

Jack London (1876–1916) lived a life of excess by conventional standards. Daring, outspoken, politically radical, amazingly imaginative, and emotionally complicated, the author of literary classics such as The Call of the Wild and The Sea-Wolf emerges in Kenneth K. Brandt’s new biography as a vital and flawed embodiment of conflicting yearnings. London’s exuberant energies propelled him out of the working class to become a world-famous writer by the age of twenty-seven—after stints as a child laborer, an oyster pirate, a Pacific seaman, and a convict. He wrote extensively about his travels to Japan, the Yukon, the slums of London’s East End, Korea, Hawaii, and the South Seas. Swiftly paced, intellectually engaging, and richly dramatic, London’s writings—bolstered by their wildly clashing philosophical viewpoints derived from thinkers like Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin—continue to engross readers with their depictions of primal urges, raw sensations, and reformist politics.

Fifty timeless novels in one collection, plus additional bonus classics: The Oresteia by Aeschylus Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa Little Women by Louisa May Alcott The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri Between Past and Future by Hannah Arendt and Jerome Kohn Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum Around the World in Seventy-Two Days and Other Writings by Nellie Bly The Brontë Sisters by Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, and Anne Brontë Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas The Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud The Iliad by Homer The Odyssey by Homer The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson Niels Lyhne by Jens Peter Jacobsen On the Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac Tristes Tropiques by Claude Levi-Strauss The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories by Jack London The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham All My Sons by Arthur Miller The Crucible by Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe by Fernando Pessoa Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by John Steinbeck East of Eden by John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck The Short Novels of John Steinbeck by John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men and The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck Dracula by Bram Stoker Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton Three Novels of New York by Edith Wharton Gray When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

The first book-length study of London as a maritime writer Jack London’s fiction has been studied previously for its thematic connections to the ocean, but Jack London and the Sea marks the first time that his life as a writer has been considered extensively in relationship to his own sailing history and interests. In this new study, Anita Duneer claims a central place for London in the maritime literary tradition, arguing that for him romance and nostalgia for the Age of Sail work with and against the portrayal of a gritty social realism associated with American naturalism in urban or rural settings. The sea provides a dynamic setting for London’s navigation of romance, naturalism, and realism to interrogate key social and philosophical dilemmas of modernity: race, class, and gender. Furthermore, the maritime tradition spills over into texts that are not set at sea. Jack London and the Sea does not address all of London’s sea stories, but rather identifies key maritime motifs that influenced his creative process. Duneer’s critical methodology employs techniques of literary and cultural analysis, drawing on extensive archival research from a wealth of previously unpublished biographical materials and other sources. Duneer explores London’s immersion in the lore and literature of the sea, revealing the extent to which his writing is informed by travel narratives, sensational sea yarns, and the history of exploration, as well as firsthand experiences as a sailor in the San Francisco Bay and Pacific Ocean. Organized thematically, chapters address topics that interested London: labor abuses on “Hell-ships” and copra plantations, predatory and survival cannibalism, strong seafaring women, and environmental issues and property rights from San Francisco oyster beds to pearl diving in the Paumotos. Through its examination of the intersections of race, class, and gender in London’s writing, Jack London and the Sea plumbs the often-troubled waters of his representations of the racial Other and positions of capitalist and colonial privilege. We can see the manifestation of these socioeconomic hierarchies in London’s depiction of imperialist exploitation of labor and the environment, inequities that continue to reverberate in our current age of global capitalism.

A bold mix of realism, allegory, adventure, and progressive politics, this collection features Jack London’s most profound and moving literary works The Call of the Wild, London’s elemental masterpiece about a dog learning to survive in the wilderness, sees pampered pet Buck snatched from his home and set to work as a sled-dog during the Klondike Gold Rush. White Fang, set in the frozen tundra and boreal forests of Canada’s Yukon territory, is the story of a wolf-dog hybrid struggling to survive in a human society every bit as brutal as the natural world. This volume of London’s famed Northland novels also includes an early feminist story “The Night-Born,” and a pro-labor story “South of the Slot.” These works echo and enrich the themes of The Call of the Wild and White Fang with their unique emphases on the primordial, the instinctual, and the quest for social justice. London’s narratives in this volume focus on issues of continuing relevance to contemporary readers, including the value of the wilderness, animal rights, socioeconomic oppression, and gender inequity. This edition also includes an introduction by preeminent London scholar, Earle Labor, as well as a comprehensive biographical note on London's life and works by scholar and executive coordinator of the Jack London Society, Kenneth K. Brandt. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

In Combating Injustice, Jon Falsarella Dawson approaches American literary naturalism as a means of social criticism, exploring the powerful economic arguments and commentaries on labor struggles presented in novels by Frank Norris, Jack London, and John Steinbeck. Making use of extensive archival research, Dawson considers many of the original periodical sources that fueled books from McTeague to The Grapes of Wrath, as Norris, London, and Steinbeck transformed contemporary materials into illustrations of the socioeconomic forces that shape American life. By depicting the operations of powerful individuals and institutions, these naturalist writers offered audiences a greater awareness of the plight of labor so that readers might find the inspiration to become agents of change. Works such as The Octopus, The Iron Heel, Martin Eden, and In Dubious Battle illuminate many of the central economic issues at play in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the rise of commodity culture, labor disputes involving industrial and agricultural workers, widespread poverty, extreme inequality, and the concentration of resources and land ownership. Norris, London, and Steinbeck highlighted the dangers of these developments by charting their impact on central characters whose fates result from the predatory tactics of corporate monopolies, wealthy individuals, and large financial establishments. Dawson’s lucid analysis shows how all three writers, drawing on contemporary events, accentuated the need for reform and stressed the potential for change by human action. Each author took inspiration from notable events in California, ranging from the Mussel Slough tragedy of 1880 to the agricultural strikes in the Central Valley during the 1930s, presenting the state as a microcosm for conditions throughout the nation during a period of tremendous upheaval. Combating Injustice: The Naturalism of Frank Norris, Jack London, and John Steinbeck provides carefully contextualized readings of three major writers whose works express both the necessity for and the possibility of creating a more egalitarian society.