"No literary historian but sooner or later must reckon with Jack London," Fred Lewis Pattee asserts in The Development of the American Short Story (1923), for "he represented more than an individual: he was the product of a literary condition in America. To understand the opening years of the new century one must study Jack Londonism."

Since the publishing of Pattee's pioneering study two generations ago, Jack London has become universally acclaimed as one of the most dynamic figures in American literature. Sailor, hobo, Klondike argonaut, social crusader, war correspondent, scientific farmer, self-made millionaire, global traveler, and adventurer: London captured the popular imagination worldwide as much through his personal exploits as through his literary efforts. But it is the quality of his writings, more than his personal legend, that has won him a permanent place in world literature and distinguished him as our most widely translated author. The Danish...