Jack London, The People of the Abyss

Alexandre Fachard (University of Geneva)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1903

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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In late July 1902, the American Press Association offered the twenty-six-year-old Jack London a commission to sail to South Africa to interview government officials and report on the aftermath of the Boer War, which had ended six weeks earlier. London was $3,000 in debt; he left California at once for New York, where he learned that his assignment had been cancelled. Instead, he would sail to England to expose the horrors of the East End. He boarded the SS

Majestic

on 30 July and was in Whitechapel a week later. He bought some second-hand clothes, and for the next seven weeks slummed among the metropolis’s underprivileged, “pos[ing] as the seafaring man who has lost his money & clothes & can’t find a ship. Being a sailor of old time, I am able to carry it off and mingle…

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2651 words

Citation: Fachard, Alexandre. "The People of the Abyss". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 August 2016 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7364, accessed 20 April 2024.]

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