Jack London Collection
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http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf8q2nb2xs No online items Inventory of the Jack London Collection Processed by The Huntington Library staff; machine-readable finding aid created by Gabriela A. Montoya Manuscripts Department The Huntington Library 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, California 91108 Phone: (626) 405-2203 Fax: (626) 449-5720 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.huntington.org/huntingtonlibrary.aspx?id=554 © 1998 The Huntington Library. All rights reserved. Inventory of the Jack London 1 Collection Inventory of the Jack London Collection The Huntington Library San Marino, California Contact Information Manuscripts Department The Huntington Library 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, California 91108 Phone: (626) 405-2203 Fax: (626) 449-5720 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.huntington.org/huntingtonlibrary.aspx?id=554 Processed by: David Mike Hamilton; updated by Sara S. Hodson Date Completed: July 1980; updated May 1993 Encoded by: Gabriela A. Montoya © 1998 The Huntington Library. All rights reserved. Descriptive Summary Title: Jack London Collection Creator: London, Jack, 1876-1916 Extent: 594 boxes Repository: The Huntington Library San Marino, California 91108 Language: English. Access Collection is open to qualified researches by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information please go to following URL. Publication Rights In order to quote from, publish, or reproduce any of the manuscripts or visual materials, researchers must obtain formal permission from the office of the Library Director. In most instances, permission is given by the Huntington as owner of the physical property rights only, and researchers must also obtain permission from the holder of the literary rights In some instances, the Huntington owns the literary rights, as well as the physical property rights. Researchers may contact the appropriate curator for further information. The collection is open to all Huntington readers qualified to use manuscript collections. Before copying copyrighted materials, however, readers and correspondents must first secure the permission of the Jack London estate. A permissions form, supplied by the estate, can be obtained in the Huntington Registrar's office. This form must be completed and signed before readers may request photocopies or permission to publish material written by Jack or Charmian London, Eliza or Irving Shepard, or Jack Byrne. There is usually no problem in obtaining permission from the estate for scholarly use of the material in the collection. Readers are referred to the Registrar for answers to any questions they may have regarding the permission procedure. Preferred Citation [Identification of item], Jack London Collection, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Research in the Jack London Field Jack London scholarship saw a great resurgence during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Today several fine books have been published in the field, including Earle Labor's Jack London, Jack London Reports (edited by King Hendricks and Irving Inventory of the Jack London 2 Collection Shepard), Letters from Jack London (edited by King Hendricks and Irving Shepard), McClintock's book on London's short stories, Woodbridge's bibliography of Jack London, etc. Several biographies have been written about London. Beginning with the first : Sailor on Horseback, most have contained serious flaws. Andrew Sinclair's Jack was the first to be written using the Huntington Collections and is scholarly in its approach. Several popular biographies, including Kingman's pictorial, have also been written recently. Scholars active in the field (published or with works in progress) include Earle Labor, Robert C. Leitz (who are together working on a three-volume edition of London's letters) [this has been issued: Labor, Earle, Robert C. Leitz III, and I. Milo Shepard, eds., The Letters of Jack London (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988)], Howard Lachtman (editing several books on Jack London), etc. A catalog of the Jack London library is available for use in the rare book catalog area. Approximately 25% of the books in the 5,000-volume library are annotated. A bibliography of the annotated books in the library is in the process of being published . [This has been issued: Hamilton, David Mike, The Tools of My Trade: The Annotated Books in Jack London's Library (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986).] Several other London organizations or journals are: What's New About London Jack?, The Jack London Newsletter, The London Collector, Wolf House Books, The Jack London Educational Foundation, and the World of Jack London Museum and Bookstore. In addition, London's home and ranch are now part of the Jack London Historic State Park, Glen Ellen, California. Jack London: An American Author A sometime tramp, oyster pirate, seaman, socialist, laundryman, and miner, Jack London is as famous for the lives he lived and the myths he wove around them as he is for the short stories and novels he wrote. Largely self-educated, Jack London was the product of California ranches and the working class neighborhoods of Oakland. Born January 12, 1876, in San Francisco, London's early life revolved around the rural areas of the San Francisco bay area. His edu cation --what little he had --came from Oakland city schools; he earned a high school diploma from Oakland High School after sporadic attendance. London's rise to literary fame came as a result of the Klondike gold rush. Unsuccessful in his attempt to break into the magazine market, Jack London joined the flood of men rushing toward instant riches in the Yukon. He found little gold, but returned after the winter of 1897 with a wealth of memories and notes of the northland, the gold rush, and the hardships of the trail. By 1900 Jack London had firmly established himself as a major American writer; his first book, The Son of the Wolf, was published by Houghton Mifflin Company the same year. London married Elizabeth May Maddern in 1900. The couple settled in Oakland, later moved to Piedmont, and soon thereafter added two daughters to the family: Joan and Bess. The marriage was not successful, however, and London divorced Bess in 1905, marrying Charmian Kittredge the same year. The marriage, which had come just after a sojourn to Korea to cover the impending Russo-Japanese War for the Hearst newspapers, was covered quite liberally in the press, and London used the exposure to launch a lectu re tour for the benefit of the Socialist Party. Charmian was adventurous, and together the Londons planned a seven-year voyage around the world on a yacht they named Snark. The trip, begun in 1906, was cut short in Australia two years later because of London's ill health. Undaunted, London returned with his wife to Glen Ellen, which had become their home. There he expanded his land holding s and began construction of a large ranch complex complete with palatial headquarters. Named "Wolf House," the headquarters home London constructed burned down the day it was finished. London was crushed by the burning (which was rumored to have been arso n) and never fully recovered. To support his building program and extravagant life style, London wrote at a furious pace. By 1916 he had published almost fifty books. His body could not withstand the brutal treatment it received, however, and on November 22, 1916, Jack London died. His death has still not been satisfactorily explained. David Mike Hamilton Scope and Content The 594-box Jack London Collection could properly be termed the author's personal archive, because of its size and completeness. With only a few exceptions, the collection contains autograph or typescript versions of almost everything Jack London wrote. Included in the archive are most of the London correspondence files; his literary notes, documents, and contracts; memos and letters regarding the operation of his Sonoma County Beauty Ranch; most of his personal and family papers; his financial records; and his library and photograph collection. The majority of the pieces range in date from 1903 to 1917, and with almost sixty thousand pieces, the collection is the largest literary archive at the Huntington. History of the Collection In June 1924, the Huntington staff first learned that Jack London's widow wished to dispose of her husband's papers. Worried over the everpresent danger of fire on the Beauty Ranch, Charmian Kittredge London decided to find safer quarters for her husband's manuscripts. She broached the plan to Willard Samuel Morse, a prominent Los Angeles book collector who specialized in California authors. Morse promptly wrote to the Huntington. Although Charmian had considered Inventory of the Jack London 3 Collection disposing of the papers in England, Morse felt strongly that the California author's papers should stay in his native state. The Huntington, he believed, would be the proper place to house them. Librarian Leslie Edgar Bliss concurred with Morse's opinion, and with a copy of Charmian London's "Jack London Original Handwritten Manuscripts for Sale" in hand, he wrote to her expressing his and the Library's interest in purchasing the collection: ...I have your list of Jack London's manuscripts and have gone over it carefully. I hope that we may be able to come to some satisfactory arrangement whereby the Huntington Library may become the home of this material. ...In any case, before I could close any contract for their purchase, I should have to make a trip to Glen Ellen for a brief examination of them, and that is at least a month off. Not until February of 1925 was Leslie Bliss able to arrange a visit to the London ranch. Later he recalled the visit: Mrs. London was most hospitable and the material for sale was fascinating indeed. Had it not been for the fact that she had persuaded her husband to give her all his manuscripts early in her work with him they might all have been destroyed as he was in the habit of destroying them after publication.