Jack London

Author and Adventurer

Literary Friendships

Jack London maintained friendships with a number of turn-of-the-century authors, with whom he could exchange letters containing mutual support, literary ideas and frank appraisals of one another's writings. Whether writing to a close friend or a much-admired world-class author, London was always an engaging, energetic correspondent.

Jack London. Letter to Cloudesley Johns, June 16, 1900.
JL 12134

Johns, a young writer and postmaster in the desert town of Harold, California, wrote to London in 1899 to praise and congratulate him on the publication of "To the Man on Trail." This began a close friendship and a candid, lifelong literary correspondence. They critiqued one another's work and shared their successes, failures and philosophies of writing.

Joseph Conrad. Victory, Garden City, New York, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1915, annotated by Cloudesley Johns.  
RB 483409

London made many annotations in this volume. He read passages aloud to Cloudesley Johns as they sailed in the Sacramento River region in 1915. On the page displayed, Johns noted, "Possum, without warning, leaped into my lap as I was reading this page. His feet were not clean. Cloudesley Johns."

George Sterling. The House of Orchids and Other Poems, San Francisco, A.M. Robertson, 1911, inscribed to Jack London, April 11, 1911.
RB 339667

California poet George Sterling was one of London's closest friends. Part of "the crowd" of London's friends, George and Carrie Sterling were frequent guests at the Londons' ranch and were with them at the artists' colony in Carmel.

Sterling's and London's nicknames for one another were "Greek" and "Wolf."

Jack London. Invoice to Sinclair Lewis, October 4, 1910.  
JL 12395

London purchased plot ideas from Sinclair Lewis, as this "very businesslike invoice" shows. Some critics have cited this as evidence that London's creative spark had flamed out by the last few years of his life. However, as early as 1899 a young London had written to Cloudesley Johns: "Well, I can't construct plots worth a dam, but I can everlastingly elaborate."

Mary Austin suggested a different, humanitarian reason for London to purchase plots: providing financial assistance to struggling fellow writers. This is supported by Sinclair Lewis' letter to London, prompting the businesslike invoice: "I hope to gawd that you will feel like taking a considerable part of [the plots], because, if you do, it will probably finally give me the chance to get back to free lancing -- nothing but writing -- which I haven't done for over a year; can the job and really get at decent work."

Upton Sinclair. Autograph letter to Jack London, March 7, 1906.
JL 18265

In this letter, Sinclair asks London, a fellow socialist, to help garner publicity for his novel The Jungle by promoting it to prominent editors Arthur Brisbane and Bailey Millard. London, with his strong feeling of compassion for laborers, praised the novel generously. A quotation from his review appears on the letterhead of Sinclair's stationery.

A friend and collaborator of Sinclair, London wrote an introduction in 1915 for Sinclair's The Cry for Justice, an anthology of social protest.

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