In Author Under Sail: The Imagination of Jack London, 1907–1910, Jay Williams offers his third volume on the life and work of Jack London, socialist writer, activist, and preeminent author. The volume begins in 1907, as London returns to the United States from a South Pacific sojourn taken with his wife, Charmian London, and a small crew. The voyage was a literary travel adventure story, starting in questionable and rushed circumstances and ending in sickness and near madness. On the voyage London taught himself navigation, holding a slim volume as he stood at the wheel. He learned medicine from his library and relied on multiple maps and sailing guides, as well as guidebooks to various islands. Books were also a principal form of entertainment.
Although London promised a tsunami of articles about his Snark voyage to multiple magazine editors, he ultimately wrote far fewer than planned—and stopped writing them as if in mid-sentence. By the time he returned home, London was ready to make two major changes in his authorial career. First, he decided to change book publishers, but he and George Brett of Macmillan Company patched up their business relationship after two years. Second, he chose to focus primarily on novels. London stuck to his plan, writing five novels in five years, and he died writing a sixth.
Along with examining the functions and works of London’s exhaustive imagination, Williams takes a critical look at London’s ability to tell his stories to wide audiences, providing a multidimensional examination of the life of a crucial American storyteller and essayist.