The Unabridged Jack London

by Jack London, Lawrence Teacher (Editor), Richard E. Nicholls (Editor)

The Unabridged Jack London is a comprehensive collection of the author's sprawling, timeless fiction, including novels and short stories.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Short Stories, Literature, Adventure

1143 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

John Griffith Chaney, better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.

London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of animal rights, workers’ rights and socialism. London wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, War of the Classes, and Before Adam.

His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in Alaska and the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote about the South Pacific in stories such as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen".

Reviews

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

They ran many miles that day. They ran through the night. And the next day found them still running. They were running over the surface of a world frozen and dead. No life stirred. They alone moved through the vast inertness. They alone were alive, and they sought for other things that were alive in order that they might devour them and continue to live.

I have never read any Jack London. I happened to see this book at a library book sale and picked it up because Mark Steyn has chosen a few Jack London stories to read for his Tales for Our Time. I thoroughly enjoyed his readings of “To Build a Fire”, “To the Man on the Trail”, and “A Klondike Christmas”.

This is a twelve hundred page collection of London’s short stories and a few novellas, possibly even a novel or two depending on your definitions. Since these are the only London stories I’ve read, I can’t say that it’s the best collection available, or that these are the best stories. But I’m glad I bought it and I’m glad I read it. If these are not London’s best, then I am going to be amazed by the stories that are not here.

The stories range from outdated to amazing, with more on the latter end. They are, so far, all about the northern territories, around Alaska, when the borders between Alaska and Canada didn’t really matter a lot to the people there.

In pain the babe sucks his first breath, in pain the old man gasps his last, and all his days are full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes down to the open arms of Death, stumbling, falling, with head turned backward, fighting to the last. And Death is kind. It is only Life, and the things of Life that hurt. Yet we love Life and we hate Death.

Among the novels included is White Fang, which is one of the classic dog loyalty stories. It’s a very emotional tale about a part dog/part wolf, raised both in the wild and among men, who is treated somewhat badly and then very badly, and how this affects the animal’s view of the world. Most of the story comes from the animal’s view, and London’s (or his narrator’s) views of how dogs see the world. London contrasts the dog’s response to bad treatment to human response to bad treatment. The dog is logical; the human is not. I’m not sure this is what London meant to say, but he ends up saying that bad dogs can be saved, and bad humans are forever lost.

The “Faith of Men” section is a somewhat more varied collection. The first couple of stories are tall-tales inspired, with their subject the “mighty hunter… Thomas Stevens”, who comes upon prehistoric creatures, and nearly prehistoric tribes. The final stories are both more pessimistic about humanity, especially civilized humanity, and less compelling. The final story, “The Story of Jees Uck”, inspired the biting fear that it was going to turn out to be one of the inspirations for Miss Saigon, and the feeling grew stronger the further into the story I got. But it wasn’t, and the ending it did have was something of a let-down because of the comparison.

Man can endure hardship and horror with equanimity, but take from him his sugar, and he raises his lamentations to the stars.

The Uncollected Stories and Tales section contains the amazing “To Build a Fire”, which was my introduction to Jack London. There are also some random descriptions of life in the Klondike, such as of “The Gold Hunters of the North” and of “Housekeeping in the Klondike”.

Probably his most well-known story is “The Call of the Wild”, a short novel about a kidnapped pet transported to Alaska to work as a sled dog in the gold rush. It is the antithesis of most children’s stories now and even to a large extent then. In fact, I doubt he meant it as a children’s story but rather as an allegorical adventure. Life is hard, cruel, and dangerous, but with wits and an innate strength there are possibilities.

He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.

The Sea Wolf is an impressive story, and like many of the stories here it doesn’t quite follow formula. I have not seen any of the many films based on the book; I’m not surprised it was made into so many movies—it has a very cinematic style, in the way things are described and in how characters respond. I also, however, suspect that the movies tone things down a lot. Like most London stories it contains brutality as a matter of course, ingrained in the nature of some humans.

Wolf Larsen reminds me of the later Emeric Belasco in Richard Matheson’s Hell House. This could almost be the backstory for that novel, if Hell House were a sailing ship. London sums up Larsen’s brutality by comparing him to people known for their brutality:

…with a reputation for frightening brutality amongst the men who hunted seals

Larsen is made brutal by his civilization. He has a brother who is mean, but generally content with his life. Larsen is not content, and he’s not content because he is widely read.

…[my brother] is all the happier for leaving life alone. He is too busy living it to think about it. My mistake was in ever opening the books.

Many of London’s stories in this collection include evil men who were shaped by brutal upbringings, but why that upbringing should make them evil is unexplained. Here, one of the lesser characters explains why he cannot change:

“If I was President of the United Stytes to-morrer, ’ow would it fill my belly for one time w’en I was a kiddy and it went empty?”

Confrontations are very off-kilter in The Sea Wolf. They happen when expected, but not as expected, because the important aspect of the confrontation is not between two men, but between civilization and barbarism. So it is not at all unexpected when Wolf Larsen finds the protagonist again toward the end of the book, but it is unexpected that there is no violent confrontation. Humphrey van Weyden is confronting the two sides of his own nature more than he is confronting Wolf Larsen, and the question is whether barbarism or civilization wins.

The collection ends with London’s “Fish Patrol” stories. London himself had taken part in the San Francisco Fish Patrol on both sides of the gun when he was very young, and there is a very youthful sense of adventure in these stories.

Unlike his later stories, while there is an intellectual acknowledgment that death is possible from doing stupid things, there is no deep and overriding acknowledgement by the young character here, working his way toward finishing high school by collecting bounties as a sort of privateer in the Fish Patrol. He faces rifle fire, dangerous currents, and even deadly cold—the ever-present killer in London’s Alaska stories—with the youthful assurance that somehow he’ll survive. This was, in fact, a great way to end the collection.

He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn.

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this very thick book (over a thousand pages) to be a great book to keep by the bed; I would read a short story or two, or a chapter or two, each night before going to sleep, and enjoyed my reading. While this book does not contain all of London’s fiction (it would take several thousand more pages to contain all of his novels and stories), it contains the cream of the crop, about 2/3 ice and snow in the frozen Yukon, and 1/3 on the ocean sea in the Pacific.

After an introduction by the Editors, Part One: The Yukon begins. This section contains the short story collections The Son Of The Wolf, The God Of His Fathers, and Children of the Frost, followed by the novel White Fang (in which the title animal, 1/4 dog and 3/4 wolf, starts wild in the Yukon and ends up in California). This is followed by the short story collection The Faith of Men. Next, we have Uncollected Stories and Tales, which includes perhaps the most famous of all of London’s short stories, “To Build A Fire”. The Yukon section ends with the novel The Call of the Wild (in which the dog Buck starts in California and ends up in the Yukon).

Part Two: The Sea starts with the novel The Sea Wolf (I can do no better than to quote Ambrose Bierce, who said about this novel, "The great thing—and it is among the greatest of things—is that tremendous creation, Wolf Larsen… the hewing out and setting up of such a figure is enough for a man to do in one lifetime… The love element, with its absurd suppressions, and impossible proprieties, is awful.” The book ends with the short story collection Tales of the Fish Patrol, based on the teenage London’s experience with the San Francisco Fish Patrol in going after fishermen breaking game laws.

I loved this book, especially since I had never read White Fang, The Call of the Wild, or The Sea Wolf before; and by the time I got to the short story “To Build A Fire”, it meant more to me due to all of the ice and snow and such that had gone before it in my reading. I recommend this book to all who like good plots and great atmosphere.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A friend gave this to me in elementary school (she knew I loved this author) and I enjoyed and recommended it so much that I eventually, inevitably, let someone borrow it years ago, and it has not come back. I don't regret it, though--I hope it goes on to be a favorite somewhere else. Well worth reading and re-reading. Jack London isn't subtle, and his large themes are predictable, but I think there's something refreshing in that, and even more so in his really fascinating details. Very few are so realistic and interesting in telling the details of action, especially of adventures very few will experience themselves. His stories are always interesting.

I've always found him inspiring--his rawness is more obvious to me as an adult, but I don't mind it.

[Barry Martin Vass · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack London always had an itch to go somewhere else, to journey far and see how other people lived their lives. Born in San Francisco on January 12th, 1876, to a dysfunctional family, young Jack's initial escape was through books; in particular he immersed himself in the adventure stories of Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling. At the age of sixteen he was working as a longshoreman; after that he signed on to a seal-hunting schooner bound for the Siberian coast. In 1893 he traveled to China and then Japan. He tramped across the United States and Canada; at times he was a hobo. During this time he read constantly, and became a passionate advocate of unionization, workers' rights, socialism, and eugenics; most of his stories are told through that point of view. He published his first short story in 1894, and his first novel, The Cruise of the Dazzler, in 1902 (his great success, The Call of the Wild, was published the following year). By this time new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines, and London's adventure stories became very popular as his fame spread. The Klondike Gold Rush began in 1897, and London took off again, returning with story material and backgrounds for his wilderness stories. This is a very long anthology, full of stories and novels about pirates operating in and around the San Francisco Bay, sailors brawling in Yokohama, surviving a typhoon off the coast of Japan, miners and prospectors fighting for survival in the frozen north - you get the idea. London was a natural short story writer, but most of his novels were flawed in one way or another because of his impatience and lack of knowledge in the form (he was largely self-taught). But no one can argue with his prose. Here's an example: "His whole attitude breathed indomitability, courage, strength. Joe looked upon him in sudden awe, and, realizing the enormous possibilities in the man, felt sorrow for the way in which they had been wasted. A pirate - a robber! In that flashing moment he caught a glimpse of truth, grasped at the mystery of success and failure. Of such stuff as Nelson were heroes made, but they possessed wherein he lacked - the power of choice, the careful poise of mind, the sober control of soul." Jack London died at the age of forty, but he surely lived a life few men have dreamed of.

[D.G. Post · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains a couple of good novels, for which London is famous, but it also includes To Build a Fire and so many other great works of short fiction. The art of the short story is difficult to master, but master it he did. Many are about the northland and the gold rush, others about his time working as a war correspondent and for the Red Cross. As with many of his day, he had some rather racist views, and these do rear their ugly head from time to time. At the same time, London seemed to have a genuine respect for all humankind (well, half of it, perhaps; he’d have said mankind) on a certain level, especially when it came to cooperating and sticking up for one another to survive against winter and ravenous wolves and the vastness of the North. I do wish he could have seen the movie “Never Cry Wolf” though, out of fairness to them.

His absolute love of the wild, and his respect for the grit it takes to exist in it, captured my imagination as a boy, and to this day have not let it go.

[MWT · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of my favorite books as a kid. So many awesome stories all in one book.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity — the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heaven's artillery — but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggot's life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And the fear of death, of God, of the universe, comes over him — the hope of the Resurrection and the Life, the yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence — it is then, if ever, man walks alone with God"

[Karlye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the story "White Fang" . I thought this books was very interesting. This book is unique because it lets the reader see things from an animals point of view. The overall plot was pretty good but it did have some flaws such as not describing the surroundings enough. Its was a fairly easy book to read but it does switch from White Fang's point of view to Scott's. This could be confusing at times because you didn't know who was talking and thinking. Overall I'd say this book was pretty good and I would recommend it to anyone who likes animals. Jack London has written many books on dogs, so if you like this one you will probably like the rest.

[Tinquerbelle]

1) The Son of the Wolf
2) The God of His Fathers
3) Children of the Frost
4) White Fang
5) The Faith of Men
6) Uncollected Stories and Tales*
7) The Call of the Wild
8) The Sea-Wolf
9) Tales of the Fish Patrol

*Uncollected Stories and Tales
1) Gold Hunters of the North
2) Thanksgiving on Slav Creek
3) Husky--Wolf Dog of the North
4) To Build a Fire
5) Up the Slide
6) Housekeeping in the Klondike
7) The Sun Dog Trail
8) The Unexpected
9) Love of Life

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read many Jack London stories in one form or another over the years. I lost many of the books. Somewhere along the way, I got this collection. I think maybe I'm drawn to Jack London's work and life because of the similarities to Ernest Hemingway. I'll expand on that as I move forward with reading and/or re-reading his stories.

[Ethan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave this book a five star rating because, it is a really adventurous, and fun filled book. There are many stories inside of this book that are very fun to read and will keep you turning the page. I would recommend this book to other kids who like action and stories of people in the wilderness. It may be a long book but after awhile you will really get into the book and the pages will fly by.

[Albie]

The Unabridged Jack London (Courage Unabridged Classics) by Jack London (1997)

[Midnight Blue · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've never read Jack London you should and if you haven't read him in a while it's time to get reacquainted; one of my favorite authors of all-time.

[B. Scott Holmes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adventure and drama. Man pitted against elements greater than himself where the smallest mistake can be fatal. The inability to build a fire, a frozen death. Don't forget the Sea Wolf.

[April Sutherland · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite works of Jack London are "Tales of the Fish Patrol, based on the teenage London’s experience with the San Francisco Fish Patrol in going after fishermen breaking game laws."