Jack London - The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories

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Introduction, Note on the Text, Select Bibliography, Chronology, Explanatory Notes
Earle Labor and Robert C. Leitz, III 1990

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First published as a Worlds Classics paperback 1990
Reissued as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 1998
Reissued 2009

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
London, Jack, 18761916.
[Selections. 1990]

The call of the wild, White Fang, and other stories / Jack
London : edited with an introduction by Earle Labor and Robert C.
Leitz, III.
p. cm.(Oxford worlds classics)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. DogsFiction. I. Labor, Earle, 1928. II. Leitz, Robert
C., 1944. III. Title. IV. Series.
PS3523.046A6 1990 813.52dc20 90-6879

ISBN 9780199538898

Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives pic

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OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

JACK LONDON

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by

EARLE LABOR

and

ROBERT C. LEITZ, III

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

THE CALL OF THE WILD, WHITE FANG,
AND OTHER STORIES

JACK LONDON is one of the most fascinating figures in American literary history: born illegitimate in 1876, reared in poverty, factory work beast at the age of 14, oyster pirate at 15, able-bodied seaman at 17, hobo and prison inmate at 18, Boy Socialist of Oakland at 20, Klondike argonaut at 21, professional writer at 22, Hearst journalist and Socialist candidate for Oakland mayor at 25, world-famous author of The Call of the Wild at 27, war correspondent at 28, President of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society at 29, Snark voyager through the South Seas at 31, model rancher at 35, self-made millionaire at 40. Londons personal career was more fabulous than any of his celebrated fictions.

Yet, notwithstanding the spectacle of his personal life, it is the enduring quality of his literary works that has ensured Londons permanent place among the worlds great authors. The Call of the Wild is Americas most solid claim to the title of Great World Novel, more widespread in its appeal than even such classics as Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn, both of which are surely great American novels. But Londons story about the magnificent Bucks transformation from ranch pet to Ghost Dog of the Northland has struck some deep mythic chord in readers of all ages in all countries from the time of its first publication three generations ago. His other dog fictions have likewise appealed to something subliminal and perhaps primordial in all of us. And though London produced more than fifty books on subjects ranging from agronomy and astral projection to war and writing, none of these has caught our imagination with quite the same force as his canine creations.

Jack London died from a stroke and heart failure on 22 November 1916.

EARLE LABOR is George A. Wilson Professor of American Literature at Centenary College of Louisiana. He has produced a half-dozen books and more than fifty essays and reviews on Jack London.

ROBERT C. LEITZ, III, is Professor of English at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. In addition to The Letters of Jack London (with Earle Labor and I. Milo Shepard), he has edited Volume 3 of the Selected Letters of William Dean Howells and has published widely in a number of journals.

For Dewey and Giffy

IN a letter of February 1903 to George P. Brett, President of the Macmillan Company, Jack London described a new novel he had just finished as an animal story, utterly different in subject & treatment from the rest of the animal stories which have been so successful; and yet it seems popular enough for the Saturday Evening Post, for they snapped it up right away. After reading Londons manuscript, Brett responded that he liked the story but not its title: It is a title which, it seems to me, the public would not understand until after they had read the book, he wrote. I hope something else will occur to you, as I like the story very well indeed, although I am afraid it is too true to nature and too good work to be really popular with the sentimentalist public.

Ordinarily an astute judge of what the sentimentalist public liked, in this instance Brett could scarcely have been farther off the mark. As London later recalled, When you came to the book-publication of this story, you wrote me the very same proposition [that had been sent me by the editor of the Post]: The yarn was bully, but the title was rotten. I told you the same thing I had told the editor of the