John Griffith "Jack" London (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American writer and journalist best known for his novels “The Call of the Wild” and “White Fang” set in the Klondike Gold Rush.  He was an early comer to the world of commercial magazine fiction and made a large fortune and gained worldwide celebrity from his work. 

Born out of wedlock, London was raised in the San Francisco area by his mother Flora Wellman and stepfather John London. He went to work in a cannery at age 13, then became an oyster pirate before signing on to a sealer bound for Japan at age 17. Returning during the Panic of 1893 he became a tramp and did 30 days for vagrancy in Buffalo, NY. He returned to Oakland, finished high school and attended the University of California at Berkeley with the financial aid of bartender John Heinhold, the owner of Heinhold’s First and Last Chance saloon, London’s refuge and study hall.  Financial difficulties forced him to withdraw and he left for the Klondike in 1897, where he developed scurvy and gained the experiences that inspired his earliest work.  Having socialist leanings, he was convinced conventional work was a trap and resolved to escape by “selling his brains” through writing.  His ambition coincided with the rise of popular magazines and he prospered. His penchant for adventure never abandoned him, propelling him through two marriages, journalistic assignments in the Far East and in Hawaii, and as the proprietor of the Beauty Ranch in Sonoma County, California, where died at age 40 of a combination of ailments.