Jack London

Jack London

John Griffith Chaney, who is publicly known as Jack London, was born on January 12th, 1876 (Cavendish 870). He was born in Oakland, California and is the son of William Henry Chaney and Flora Wellman (870). His father, William was a war veteran, while Flora was a musician and spiritualist. Soon after Jack was born his step-sister Eliza was born Jack and his sister got diphtheria at were forced to move. (871). The first wife Jack married was named Bess Maddern, they were married for 8 years then Jack divorced November 11, 1904. Jack remarried to Charmain Kitteridge in 1905. (871). Jack London has a drive to write because of many different things in his life such as: his upbringing, his love for the wild and his will to succeed in life.

He grew up in Oakland and went to a public school. He finished out his years of middle school and junior high but when high school came around he skipped it and stayed home to work (871). After working for a while he got bored and decided he should go back to school. At age 19 he got back into public high school and realized it was not what he wanted to do and dropped out (871). After finding out the hard way he realized that if he didn't get a good education he would not be able to have as good a job as he wanted so he stayed home and studied for over 18 hours a day and he passed the college entrance exam. He was accepted into the University of California located in Berkley (871). The public library and it soon became one of his favorite places to visit (871). If he wasn't in the room or in class I always knew he was at the library. His nose was always buried in different books everyday.

Jack bought an Oyster digging company named Razzle Dazzle which he seemed pretty content with for a while. He dug for oysters at night, that didn't really belong to him, and sold them on the market to the general public. It seemed as though he was making a good livings wage for a single man so far, but the job wasn't the best. After a little while of doing this job he joined a large boat crew on the Sophia Sutherland (871). The boat was headed for Japan and this would have been the first time Jack had left the country. After the ship left Jack experienced lots of new things but one he certainly remembered, sea sickness. Most of the nights on the ship were not pleasant due to the large roaring seas crashing up against the side of the boat and the water flowing over onto the ships deck. He could only take so much of this and after only three months of this came back home to Oakland and stayed for a while. Upon his return however, he had written a story