Torn by a quirk of fate from his life as a dilettante and intellectual, Humphrey van Weydon finds himself at the whim of the ruthless Wolf Larsen. The two men—one youthful, idealistic, and upper-class while the other ruthless, dangerous, self-taught, and self-determined—inevitably become adversaries. As he does in Call of the Wild and White Fang, Jack London dramatizes in this story the violent encounter between safe, genteel comfort and a brutal set of circumstances.
Jack London (1876–1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. Before making a living at his writing, he spent time as an oyster pirate, a sailor, a cannery worker, a gold miner, and a journalist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction writing. He is best known for his novels The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set 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 of the South Pacific in such stories as “The Pearls of Parlay” and “The Heathen.” He was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers and wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics, including The Iron Heel, The People of the Abyss, and The War of the Classes.