The Call of the Wild: A BBC Radio full-cast dramatisation

About Jack London

Jack London was born into poverty in San Francisco in 1876. Before his success as a novelist London spent a lot of time avoiding a life as a manual worker and in the process experienced many things that became central to his plots. He ran away from home bought a sailing boat and became an oyster pirate - a story recounted in John Barleycorn. His best-known novel The Call of the Wild was drawn from his own experience of the Klondike Gold Rush a time that would inspire many of London's short stories as well. London became addicted to writing after winning a short story competition in the San Francisco Morning Call in 1893. It earned London $25 the equivalent of a month's wages. Dozens of books followed - including John Barleycorn (1913) The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906). He published an average of three or four books a year. He died in 1916.