John Barleycorn or Alcoholic Memoirs

Jack London

Jack London was born January 12, 1876 in San Francisco. He lived an adventurous life. He worked as an oyster pirate, for the Bay Area fisheries police and on a seal catcher, he was traveling as a tramp and had to serve a prison sentence, as well as he was a Hobo. In 1896, after just three months of preparation, London passed the entrance examination of the University of Berkeley, where he studied for two years. He did not finish his studies because he had to take a job to feed his family. London began to become a writer in the mid-1890s and began to write, often inspired by his own experiences.

In 1897, he was one of the first prospectors at the Klondyke River. Influenced by these experiences, the short story "The White Silence" was written. The breakthrough came with the story "An Odyssey of the North," which appeared in 1900, and earned him a number of other orders. In the following years London not only wrote a total of 27 novels, but also numerous essays, often political content, dramas, reports and short stories. Jack London died on November 22, 1916 on his farm in Glen Ellen, California.