White Fang.

LONDON, Jack.

Item Number: 107388

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1906.

First edition of London’s beloved novel. Octavo, original pictorial cloth with white and gilt lettering. Frontispiece and 6 color plates by Charles Livingston Bull. With usual cancel title page. BAL notes that the cancel page occurs printed on either wove or on laid paper (the rest of the text sheets are all laid paper) but no priority or other significance. BAL 11896. In near fine condition. Accompanied by a rare Oakland Central Bank check signed by London. Dated June 29 1905, the check is paid to the order of “E. Selmhardt $2.00 Jack London.” In 1905, London purchased a 1,000-acre ranch in Glen Ellen, Sonoma County, California, on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain. Desirous that the ranch become a successful business enterprise, he continued to write purely as a commercial enterprise. The ranch was ultimately an economic failure, but it was during this period that London published some of his best-known works including White Fang (1906), The Iron Heel (1908), and Adventure (1911). In near fine condition.

White Fang takes place in Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories, Canada, during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush and details White Fang's journey to domestication. It is a companion novel (and a thematic mirror) to London's best-known work, The Call of the Wild, which is about a kidnapped, domesticated dog embracing his wild ancestry to survive and thrive in the wild. Upon its release, it was an immediate success worldwide, and became especially popular among younger readers. Robert Greenwood called White Fang "one of London’s most interesting and ambitious works." It has been adapted for the screen numerous times, including a 1991 film starring Ethan Hawke.