One of America's most prolific and beloved authors, London was born in 1876 in San Francisco, California. His family was so poor that he went to work as soon as he finished grade school. His early experiences working in a saloon and a factory, hunting seals, tramping on the railroads, and spending thirty days in prison for vagrancy provided London a wealth of material for his gritty, naturalistic fiction.

In 1894 London completed high school, attended the University of California at Berkeley for one semester, and joined the Socialist Party. He immersed himself in the writings of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Herbert Spencer. He was intrigued by socialism and Darwin's concept of the "survival of the fittest," two ideas that would influence his later writings.

In 1897, frustrated with his unsuccessful attempts at starting a literary career, he went with his brother-in-law to the Klondike, in...