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In the summer of 1902, Jack London bought old clothes, took a room in the East End of London and lived for weeks among its poorest people, sleeping in…
In the summer of 1902, Jack London bought old clothes, took a room in the East End of London and lived for weeks among its poorest people, sleeping in workhouses, queuing for charity meals and walking all night with homeless men, because the police would not let them sleep on the benches. He describes the overcrowded rooms, the sweatshops, the hunger and the despair at the heart of the richest empire in the world.
Context and significance
London published the book in 1903 and later said it was the one of all his books he loved most. It is a pioneering work of undercover reporting, and it influenced George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. Read The Road and The Iron Heel.
About the author
Jack London (1876–1916) grew up poor in San Francisco and Oakland and lived a life as wild as his books: an oyster pirate at fifteen, a sailor on a sealing ship to Japan, a tramp, a socialist agitator and a gold seeker in the Klondike in 1897, where he caught scurvy and gathered material for a lifetime.
The Call of the Wild made him famous in 1903, and he became one of the best-paid writers of his day, producing White Fang, The Sea-Wolf and Martin Eden among more than fifty books. He died on his California ranch at forty.