On 20 January 1903, shortly after completing his future bestseller The Call of the Wild (1903), the twenty-seven-year-old Jack London sent a synopsis of his next novel to his publisher in America, George P. Brett of Macmillan’s:
I have made up my mind that it shall be a sea story. . . . which shall have adventure, storm, struggle, tragedy, and love. The love-element will run throughout, as the man & woman will occupy the center of the stage pretty much of all the time. Also, it will end happily. . . . My idea is to take a cultured, refined, super-civilized man and woman, (whom the subtleties of artificial, civilized life have blinded to the real facts of life), and throw them into a primitive sea-…
Please log in to
consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing
institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on
campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we
offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If
you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal
subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.
2659 words
Citation: Fachard, Alexandre. "The Sea-Wolf". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 May 2017 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7667, accessed 25 April 2024.]
