"I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate."
"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive."
Famous American writer Jack London (full name is John Griffith Chaney), was born in 1876 in the city of San Francisco . His father was astrologer William H. Chaney, who deserted when the Jack was a little boy. He was raised by his mother, Flora Wellman and stepfather, John London. The infant John Griffith Chaney was renamed to John Griffith London, later on known as Jack.
At the age of 12 he bought a small jolly boat and learned to sail. Starting from this time, sea could be considered as significant part of his life. Jack signed on as sailor on the schooner "Sophie Sutherland", bound for the coast of Japan and the Behring Sea . After he returned from this seven month sealing voyage, Jack wrote his first essay "Story of a Typhoon off the Coast of Japan", won the first prize at the contest for a descriptive article and was published in the San Francisco Call.
When Jack was 19, he completed a four-year high school course within one year and managed to enter the University of California at Berkeley . After a year of studying he quit school and went to Alaska , joining the Klondike gold rush of 1897. He returned the next year, still poor and jobless. He decided to earn his living as a writer.
Jack London published his first book "The Son of the Wolf" in 1900. His stories about Alaskan adventures gained a wide audience. In the next 17 years of his life he completed more than 50 books, mostly fiction, hundreds of short stories, and numerous articles.
