1876-1916
Naturalistic Writer

Breaking Out.

In the 1900s Jack London's naturalistic fiction crashed in on the polite drawingroom stories that had dominated American writing in the late nineteenth century, and left a dramatic mark. His heroes braved the harshest natural elements in Alaska or the open sea and came to see themselves and society with a clarity forged from struggle. London's fascination with the primitive in man, and with the brutal, strong, and simple man of an earlier era, stood in stark contrast to the intellectual and middlebrow heroes of William Dean Howells or Henry James. In creating a compelling portrait of what men learned when stripped of society's comforts, London's short stories and novels introduced a newly masculinized style of writing to American fiction that served as a bridge between the adventure stories of Mark Twain and the war stories of Ernest Hemingway.

Early Life.