Martin Eden Read Online Free

it to pieces—a wolf-rabble that fawned on him instead of fanging him. Fawn or fang, it was all a matter of chance.
    Posterity confirmed London’s disdain. If Martin Eden was a failure at the time because it was before its time, it proved to be the only one of his fifty books that his publishers, Macmillan, kept in print in a cloth edition for seventy years, selling a quarter of a million copies. Against its author’s intention, it appealed to young writers determined to succeed by force of will and dedication, without benefit of innate talent. The novel’s disillusion with bourgeois values suited the iconoclasm of the 1920s and the anticapitalism of the Depression decade of the 1930s. Its uneasy balance between the drive to succeed at all costs and the despair that follows victory seemed truthful. Only the problem of Martin Eden’s suicide—paralleled by the early death of London from excess in 1916—prevented full acceptance and critical acclaim.
    In the general reevaluation of London’s work begun by Maxwell Geismar and Franklin Walker, Martin Eden has taken a significant place. Its force and appeal have survived the passage of time; its flaws and unevenness are less relevant. Always popular in France and Italy, Germany and Russia, the novel has been recently adapted into a television series that proved more successful in many European countries than even Roots or Holocaust. (CBS will screen the television series in the United States.) For Jack London was the incessant Californian pilgrim. However great his self-destructiveness, his mind ranged after the infinite possibilities of mankind. If he despaired from time to time, he also sought a new vision on a renewed earth. Martin Eden was his autobiographical novel. His determination and his questings make it live.
    â€”Andrew Sinclair

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

BOOKS BY JACK LONDON
    The Abysmal Brute. New York, 1913.
The Acorn Planter. New York, 1916.
Adventure. New York, 1911.
Before Adam. New York, 1907.
Burning Daylight. New York, 1910.
The Call of the Wild. New York, 1903.
Children of the Frost. New York, 1902.
The Cruise of the Dazzler. New York, 1902.
The Cruise of the Snark. New York, 1911.
A Daughter of the Snows. Philadelphia, 1902.
Dutch Courage and Other Stories. New York, 1922.
The Faith of Men. New York, 1904.
The Game. New York, 1905.
The God of His Fathers. New York, 1901.
Hearts of Three. New York, 1920.
The House of Pride and Other Tales of Hawaii. New York, 1912.
The Human Drift. New York, 1917.
The Iron Heel. New York, 1908.
Jerry of the Islands. New York, 1917.
John Barleycorn. New York, 1913.
The Little Lady of the Big House. New York, 1916.
Lost Face. New York, 1910.
Love of Life and Other Stories. New York, 1907.
Martin Eden. New York, 1909.
Michael, Brother of Jerry. New York, 1917.
Moon-Face and Other Stories. New York, 1906.
The Mutiny of the Elsinore. New York, 1914.
The Night-Born. New York, 1913.
On the Makaloa Mat. New York, 1919.
The People of the Abyss. New York, 1903.
The Red One. New York, 1918.
Revolution and Other Essays. New York, 1910.
The Road. New York, 1907.
The Scarlet Plague. New York, 1915.
Scorn of Women. New York, 1906.
The Sea-Wolf. New York, 1904.
Smoke Bellew. New York, 1912.
The Son of the Wolf. Boston, 1900.
A Son of the Sun. New York, 1912.
South Sea Tales. New York, 1911.
The Star Rover. New York, 1915.
The Strength of the Strong. New York, 1914.
Tales of the Fish Patrol. New York, 1905.
Theft: A Play in Four Acts. New York, 1910.
The Turtles of Tasman. New York, 1916.
The Valley of the Moon. New York, 1913.
War of the Classes. New York, 1905.
When God Laughs and Other Stories. New York, 1911.
White Fang. New York, 1906.

BOOKS BY JACK LONDON AND OTHERS
    London, Jack, and Strunsky, Anna. The Kempton-Wace Letters. New York, 1903.
    London, Jack, completed by Robert L. Fish. The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. New York, 1963.

CRITICISM AND BIOGRAPHY
    Bridgwater, P. Nietzsche in Anglosaxony: