On 20 January 1903, shortly after completing his future bestseller The Call of the Wild (1903), the twenty-seven-year-old Jack London sent a synopsis of his next novel to his publisher in America, George P. Brett of Macmillan’s:
I have made up my mind that it shall be a sea story. . . . which shall have adventure, storm, struggle, tragedy, and love. The love-element will run throughout, as the man & woman will occupy the center of the stage pretty much of all the time. Also, it will end happily. . . . My idea is to take a cultured, refined, super-civilized man and woman, (whom the subtleties of artificial, civilized life have blinded to the real facts of life), and throw them into a primitive sea-environment where all is stress & struggle and life...
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Citation: Fachard, Alexandre. "The Sea-Wolf". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 May 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7667, accessed 09 June 2026.]
