Jack London

Author and Adventurer

The Valley of the Moon

London's ranching venture awakened in him a belief in the redemptive qualities of the land, as well as a commitment to the wise renewal of its natural resources. In this vision of mutual benefits and obligations, people can find salvation by returning to nature and her bounty, but they also must be committed, in London's words, to "making the land better for my having been."

London explored this vision in his writing, producing a series of pastoral tales, such as the novels The Valley of the Moon and Burning Daylight, and short stories like "All Gold Canyon." In contrast to the Klondike stories, in which people are pitted against nature's cruel power, these tales feature a beneficent nature sometimes threatened by human insensitivity.

Cosmopolitan, April, 1913.
JLE 160

The Valley of the Moon is the story of Billy and Saxon Roberts, a working-class couple who escape the economic and spiritual poverty of city life and find redemption by returning to the land.

Fleeing the labor unrest in Oakland that threatens to destroy them, the couple roam California, in search of the perfect place to settle and heal their city-ravaged minds and bodies. Finally, their quest takes them to their paradise, their Valley of the Moon, in the Sonoma hills.

The novel appeared both in serial form, running in Cosmopolitan from April through December, 1913, and in book form the same year.

Jack London. Burning Daylight, manuscript for the novel, 1910.
JL 510

Like Billy and Saxon Roberts in The Valley of the Moon, Elam Harnish, the protagonist of Burning Daylight, finds redemption through love and the land. However, he follows a reverse path. Where Billy Roberts escapes a life of poverty and hardship, Elam renounces his Klondike wealth and its corrupting influence for the life of a rancher.

Jack London. "All Gold Canyon," autograph manuscript, May 28, 1905.
JL 429

"All Gold Canyon" sets forth a land of Edenic beauty whose tranquility is shattered by the destructive materialism of an intruding pocket miner who despoils the sylvan landscape in search of gold. By the end of the story, after a savage ambush further violates the canyon, the land begins to regenerate and recover from the ravages of man's invasion.

London finished the story just before he paid his deposit on his first parcel of ranch land in 1905. His newly-born reverence for the land finds eloquent expression in the opening paragraphs of the story -- some of the most lyrically beautiful of all his writings.

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