Uzbekistan state university of world languages english language faculty №2 Course paper Theme: The development of American literature after the war.

5. Jack London's life and work are significant contributions to the development of American literature.
Jack London, pseudonym of John Griffith Chaney, (born January 12, 1876, San Francisco, California, U.S.—died November 22, 1916, Glen Ellen, California), American novelist and short-story writer whose best-known works—among them The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906)—depict elemental struggles for survival. During the 20th century he was one of the most extensively translated of American authors.London was also widely known for his personal exploits. A colorful, controversial personality, London was often in the news. Generally fun loving, he was quick to side with the underdog against injustice of any kind. An eloquent public speaker, he was much sought after as a lecturer on socialism and other economic and political topics.Hovewer most people considered London a living symbol of rugged individualism, a man whose fabulous success was not due to special favor of any kind, but to a combination of immense mental ability and vitality.Strikingly handsome, full of laughter, restless and courageous, always eager for adventure, Jack London was one of the most romantic figures of this time. He ascribed his worldwide literary success largely to hard work—to “dig”, as he put it. Between 1900 and 1916 he completed more than 50 fiction and non-fiction books, hundreds of short stories and numerous articles. Several of the books and many of the short stories are classics and still popular; some have been translated into as many as 70 languages. Among the best known are Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea Wolf, Martin Eden and John Barleycorn. In addition to his writing and speaking commitments, London carried on voluminous correspondence (he received some 10,000 letters per year), read proofs of his work as it went to press, and negotiated with his agents and publishers. He spent time overseeing construction of his custom-built sailing ship, the Snark, (1906-1907); the construction of his dream house, Wolf House (1910-1913); and the operation of his farm, Beauty Ranch, (1905).The natural beauty of Sonoma Valley was not lost on Jack London. The magnificent vistas and rolling hills of Glen Ellen were an ideal place for Jack and Charmian (London’s second wife) to relax and enjoy the natural life. “When I first came here, tired of cities and people, I settled down on a little farm…130 acres of the most beautiful, primitive land to be found in California.” Though the farm was badly run down, he reveled in its natural beauty.“All I wanted,” London said later, “was a quiet place in the country to write and loaf in and get out of Nature that something which we all need, only the most of us don’t know it.” But true to London’s vigorous nature, he did little loafing and was soon busy buying farm equipment and livestock for his Sonoma Mountain ranch. He began work on a new barn as well as envisioning his dream, Wolf House. “This is to be no summer residence proposition,” he wrote to his publisher as he began planning in 1905, “but a home all the year round. I am anchoring good and solid, and anchoring for keeps.”Jack London's first book, The Son of the Wolf: Tales of the Far North (1900), was a collection of short stories that he had previously published in magazines.Jack London wrote and published steadily, completing some 50 books of fiction and nonfiction in 17 years, and became the highest-paid writer in the United States at that time.The short story "To Build a Fire" (1908) was set in the Klondike and is a masterly depiction of humankind’s inability to overcome nature. It was reprinted in 1910 in the short-story collection Lost Face, one of many such volumes that London published.So the autobiographical novels of Jack London are Martin Eden (1909), The Road (1907), and John Barleycorn (1913).The Call of the Wild is often considered to be Jack London's masterpiece and is the most widely read of all his publications. The story follows Buck—a mix of St. Bernard and Scotch collie—throughout his journey as a sled dog.His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life".He carved out his own hardscrabble life as a teen. He rode trains, pirated oysters, shoveled coal, worked on a sealing ship on the Pacific and found employment in a cannery. In his free time he hunkered down at libraries, soaking up novels and travel books.true first edition, in fine condition with London's signature; of one of his more famous works; say White Fang (MacMillian 1906), could be found at auction for as little as $3,000. A signed first edition of Call of the Wild however (MacMillan 1903) could cost as much as $17,000.On November 22, 1916, 40-year-old Jack London died of gastrointestinal uremic poisoning. He had been suffering from a variety of ailments, including a kidney condition, but up to the last day of his life he was full of bold plans and boundless enthusiasm for the future. Words of grief poured into thetelegraph office in Glen Ellen from all over the world.After the birth of the baby, Flora left him for some time, Flora entrusted him to her slave Jenny Prinster. So the dark-skinned nanny, whom London always remembered with great warmth, replaced the boy's mother. Throughout his life, she remained an important person to him. At the end of the same 1876, Flora married farmer John London, an invalid and veteran of the American Civil War, who adopted the child, giving him his last name. Flora took the baby back to her, to a new family. It was then that the boy received the name John London, but later he began to sign his literary works with the name Jack (a diminutive form of the name John). Under this name, he later became known as a famous writer. The London family (John London brought his two daughters into the family, the eldest, Eliza, became Jack's true friend and guardian angel for life) settled in the working-class area of ​​San Francisco, south of Market Street. At this time, the country was gripped by a severe economic crisis that began in 1873, hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs and wandered from city to city in search of odd jobs. Jack's stepfather made several attempts at farming, which were thwarted by Flora, who was always running around with adventurous plans to get rich quick. Constantly in need, the family moved from place to place until they settled in the city of Oakland, neighboring San Francisco, where London eventually graduated from elementary school.After the death of his adoptive father (the family was left virtually without a livelihood), John early began an independent working life, full of hardships. As a schoolboy, he sold morning and evening newspapers, worked part-time at the bowling alley, arranging skittles, and also as a cleaner of beer pavilions in the park. After graduating from elementary school, at the age of fourteen, he entered a canning factory as a worker. The work was very hard, and he left the factory, in order, in his words, "finally not turn into a working animal." For $300 borrowed from Virginia (Jenny) Prentiss, he bought a used Razzle-Dazzle schooner and became an "oyster pirate": illegally caught oysters in San Francisco Bay and sold them to restaurants. In those years, there was a poaching "oyster flotilla" there. A fifteen-year-old teenager has fully mastered adult life and even got himself a girlfriend. Thanks to the brave character of Jack (he soon became the "king of the pirates"), he was lured into the service by a fishing patrol, which was just fighting poachers. This period of Jack London's life is dedicated to "Tales of the Fishing Patrol". At the same time, he became addicted to alcohol, and this passion later turned into chronic alcoholism, which, however, did not prevent the working guy from Auckland from passing the matriculation exams externally and entering the university, where he studied for a year. In 1893, he was hired as a sailor on the fishing schooner Sophie Sutherland, setting off to catch seals off the coast of Japan and in the Bering Sea. The first voyage gave London many vivid impressions, which later formed the basis of many of his sea stories and novels (The Sea Wolf, etc.). Returning home seven months later, he was for some time a worker in a jute factory, an ironer in a laundry and a stoker (the novels Martin Eden and John Barleycorn).