Kershaw Alex - A Life by Kershaw

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Contents

FOR ROBIN

BOOKS BY JACK LONDON

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the kind help and advice of many individuals. I would first like to thank Milo Shepard, executor of the Jack London Estate, for his generosity and invaluable advice, and for allowing me permission to quote from materials copyrighted by the Trust of Irving Shepard, from other sources held at the Huntington Library in San Marino and other collections, and from Charmian Londons The Book of Jack London.

I am also indebted to Sue Hodson at the Huntington Library and to its staff for their help over a two-year period in my research of the Jack London collection. Similarly, I am grateful to staff at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, at Utah State University and the University of Southern California for their permission to quote from materials held in their collections. Glenn Burch, state historian at the California State Park offices in Santa Rosa, provided great assistance in sorting through several hundred photographs. He also granted me permission to use many of those that appear in this book.

I would also like to thank Winnie Kingman at the Jack London Research Center and bookstore in Glen Ellen for reading the manuscript and providing answers to many questions. Her late husband, Russ Kingman, is one of several biographers whose studies aided me considerably in my assessment of Jack Londons life. Others whose work I found both inspiring and helpful include the pre-eminent London scholar Earle Labor, Andrew Sinclair, Carolyn Johnston, Clarice Statz, David Hamilton, Kevin Starr, Richard OConnor, Irving Stone, Franklin Walker, James McClintock, Philip Foner, A. Grove Day, John Perry and Joan London.

Nettie DeBill of Stanford University Press kindly helped in locating sources and saved me considerable time in other areas. I would also like to thank the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University for their permission to quote from The Letters of Jack London, three volumes, edited by Earle Labor, Robert C. Leitz and I. Milo Shepard.

My agents, Derek Johns and Nick Marston of A.P. Watt, and Robert Bookman of CAA, gave tremendous help and encouragement, and I was also very fortunate to have Richard Johnson and Robert Lacey as my editors at HarperCollins. Their patience and consummate professionalism are much appreciated.

Finally, there are several others without whose friendship and support in recent years this book would not have been completed: Paul Spike, Chris Littleford, David McBeth, Tessa Souter, Lindsay Stirling, my wife Robin Loerch and her family and, last but not least, my own.

Alex Kershaw, Los Angeles, 1997

MAPS

FOREWORD

The Valley of the Moon

Theres not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,

When the glow of early thought declines in feelings dull decay;

Tis not on youths smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,