JACK LONDON'S LIFE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 11045, 31 October 1921, Page 3

JACK LONDON'S LIFE

A FRANK BIOGRAPHY. FIRM FAITH IN ENGLAND. ’London. October 19. Jack London's biography, written by bis widow, will be published on Friday. An advance copy shows that it is a work of amazing frankness, and covers London's early experiences in Son Francisco as newsboy, cannery hand, oyster pirate, member of the official fish patrol, sealer, tramp, and railway stowaway. The hook relates that London was sent to gaol at Niagara for vagrancy. His adventures in the Klondyke included brilliant steering in the swirling torrent of Box Canyon. Returning to San Francisco, he married, off-handedly, Bessie Maddem, his first wife, in order to escape from a lady "highbrow." During his early literary struggles editors paid London as little as a dollar and analif for a complete manuscript. In his early correspondence London pays high tributes to England, remarking: "when England becomes so decadent as to lose her colonies she will fall. Then the United States will he shaken to its foundations. But England is not going to fall. We are the salt of the earth, and because we have it in ns to say so frankly we really are so. "The other European countries stand ostensibly alone, but really stand together when it comes to bucking the Anglo-Saxon. The United States never had bat one fight, and that was when it fought itself. Then England never bothered it, for England’s hands were full with other things, fighting in every quarter of the globs.”