Reading coupled with imagination can take us anywhere in the world… and beyond. While books can be vessels to help us travel, authors serve as tour guides. Author Jack London was a guide for people around the world. He led his many readers on adventures of survival and triumph in the North American wilderness. He took them to places not often traveled: from the harsh Klondike in To build a Fire to the Yukon Territory in The Call of the Wild or the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf.

London’s adventures in life often mirrored the adventures readers traveled through in his writings. He always sought an adventurous lifestyle whether it be mining gold, taking sailing voyages, or ranching in the mountains of California.

He was quoted in the Bulletin, a San Francisco newspaper, as saying, “...The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

This wanderlust could have been fueled by his difficult childhood. London moved often as a youth while looking for work and sustenance. He was forced to quit school in order to work to support his family.

He began selling newspapers on the street at age ten and continued working laborious jobs for the next 14 years including work in a cannery, a jute mill, shoveling coal in a power station, being a sailor, a gold prospector, and more.

Through all of this manual labor, London still dreamed of becoming a writer. He continued studying and reading. He was mostly self-taught, taking advantage of the public library. He began writing short stories and sending them to publications and received steady rejections for three years. London used the same resolve to become a writer as he used in his other work.

He continued writing and found some work as a journalist. Eventually London became one of the best-selling, highest paid, American authors of his time. He wrote prolifically: between 1900 and 1916 he completed over fifty books, including both fiction and non-fiction, hundreds of short stories, and numerous articles on a wide range of topics.

Many of his stories revolve around survival and adventure – most likely fueled by his own experiences at sea, or in Alaska, or in the fields and factories of California where he also struggled. This appealed to many people around the world — they could identify with London’s struggles and desire to succeed. He also led many people on adventures within their own imaginations, which he also found to be an important part of life, “I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate,” said London.