Jack London Books

If you had been a rake in 18th century London, you would have been very familiar with a guidebook called _Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies_. It was issued first in 1757 and continued for almost forty years a bestseller. It was a bit expensive, two shillings and sixpence, which was about what you could rent a room for. It was a guide to the prostitutes available around Covent Garden, their attractions, their talents, and, in some cases, their demerits. The authorship of the _List_ was attributed to "Harris", of course, but Hallie Rubenhold, a teacher of history, is the first to uncover the full story of the _List_'s production. In _The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack & the Extraordinary Story of Harris's List_ (Tempus Publishing), Rubenhold has not only told the story of the List and given full depictions of the three main characters involved in its production, but has also given a social history of the London of the time. It is a raucous picture, funny and sad by turns. If you appreciate the work of Hogarth, many of whose pictures are included here, you will find this a fascinating account.

Harris was not the author of the notorious book; he wasn't even Harris. He was John Harrison, who was a waiter at the Shakespear's Head tavern, a boisterous retreat especially for the theatrical set. Harris was a clever man who might have been a banker but for his low birth. He said, "I saw great room for an amendment in the profession of pimping," and worked out solutions to such problems of supplying new whores into the system. He called himself the Pimp General of All England, and few would have disagreed. He had an army of over 400 prostitutes, and was a well-known figure in the town, so including his name on the _List_ was a perfect selling point for it, but he wasn't the author. That honor, Rubenhold discovered, goes to a fascinating Irishman, Samuel Derrick. He ran away to London with aspirations to become a poet and a member of Dr. Johnson's set, and indeed became acquainted with Johnson, Boswell, and the rest. His real talents lay not in poetry but in whoring and in hack writing. It was he who produced the lists, and probably paid Harrison for the use of his assumed name in the title. The profits from the _List_ were the making of him, and he wound up surprisingly respectable. He was able to bequeath the profits of the _List_ to Charlotte Hayes, with whom he had had a fond relationship as customer, lover, and friend. She became landed gentry, although she never really left the business. Inspired by French examples, she became a mistress of high-class brothels mockingly known as nunneries. Even in comfortable widowhood and retirement, Hayes could not completely leave her background, and was sought out to help arrange assignations. This is a big story, and Rubenhold has wisely not restricted it to the lists themselves. She does, of course, include samples of what the _List_ had to say, showing that Derrick's prose was not only a precise, witty, and useful guide, but was material for fantasy that could be enjoyed as anyone can enjoy a catalogue without buying from it. Here you can find, for example, Miss Loveborn, of Number 32 George Street, who delighted in birching her customers, and it is revealed that the shop from which she bought her birchen brooms was so pleased with her custom, it granted her discounts on tea and coffee as well. There are scores of others.

The three main characters here all fared reasonably well from their trades, but Rubenhold quite rightly describes the less salubrious and cheerful parts of being a prostitute of the times. There were diseases, and cures for the diseases that were sometimes worse. There were unwanted pregnancies and distasteful ways of dealing with them. There was rape, and there was the threat of prison, though this was often for debt rather than moral crimes. Rubenhold's description of life in the Fleet Prison is unforgettable. After Harris, Derrick, and Hayes bowed off the stage, society became more prudish and the _List_ was legally closed down. It was great while it lasted, and it was the making of the pimp, the hack, and the whore, chronicled in a vastly entertaining and revealing work of history.

I ENJOYED THE movie, the soundtrack was bette

This is a wonderful reprinting of a timeless classic. It is a much needed primer for social justice issues and a wonderful resource. I would not be surprised if a second edition appears soon, updated to include writings on the modern tragedies of the Terror War, torture, renditions, and other international human rights crimes.

Jack London was the most popular bestselling author of the early twentieth-century, with his harrowing tales of survival in the north. In "Favorite Novels and Stories," London's most popular and well-known works are brought together in a boxed set.

"Call of the Wind" is a surprisingly touching novella, about a strong dog named Buck. Buck is a beloved pet who is stolen from his California home by his owner's employee, to pay the thief's debts. He's sent to the Yukon, and soon discovers that mankind is the boss there, and among dogs it's survival of the fittest. And in Buck's soul is the "call of the wild," which is slowly luring him away.

"White Fang" is the flip side of that story -- it's the story of White Fang, a young wolf who is the only survivor of his litter. At first, the young wolf is a wild, untamed creature. But then he is captured by American Indians, then sold to a man who trains him to kill. Will White Fang be able to trust his only human friend?

Then London changes his focus in "The Sea Wolf," from animals to men who act like them. Pampered Humphrey Van Weyden never had to work in his life, but that changes when he is rescued by the Ghost, and forced to work as a cabin boy. Even worse, Captain Wolf Larsen is a monstrous man who possesses great strength -- and great brains.

And finally there's "Five Great Short Stories," which more or less focus on the same things -- action, adventure, and the wild beauty of the north. The exception is "The Mexican," a story about a boxer that takes place in the southwest. London's writing is not quite as powerful in short story format, but still very strong.

The literature of the early 1900s was often pretty genteel, with only a few exceptions. Jack London's fiction was wildly different -- it explored a region that few people went to, and gave them a window into a very different way of life. In fact, the same holds true for these novels today. (The only exception is the flat romance in "Sea Wolf").

But their appeal is not just because the novels are different. London had a strong command of language and atmosphere, giving his books a richness that shows he was there, and he saw these things. He also was -- and remains -- one of the few authors who can convincingly get into an animal's head, with no cutesiness or sugarcoating.

Jack London died in 1916, but his rough-edged, adventure-packed books are as fresh as if they written yesterday. A must-have collection of his best-known works.

I picked up a copy of this book, having read several Jack London short stories, and his novels White Fang and Call of the Wild. This book mainly focuses on his stories about life in the north during the Gold Rush, all of which are very intriguing, with the exception of the Sea Wolf, which is a wonderful novel about life on the sea. If you like adventure, animals, romance, anything at all, you'll enjoy this book.

A great, great book. Really brings to light the myriad of people, places and things that comprise modern day Australia. Very funny, yet touching at times.

This book is great. It shows detailed photographs of many pieces, and the text describes the methods of construction. There is a section showing the tools they used to manufacture the jewelry, and the way the tools were used.

Wow! For those diehard "Ripper" enthusist, this book is a
must!!!
Beautiful color and B&W glossy photos of past and present!
Old location photos matched with recent color photos to show
the Whitechapel district, and how it's changed in over a
century!
Color stills, photographed from several differnt angles,
give you the atmosphere of what was once in 1888!
If you want to revel and absorb in a time and place in
history that has so much mystery to it, then this book is
definately a book for you!

The Iron Heel is interesting as an example of a "dystopian" novel which anticipates and influenced George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Jack London's (1876-1916) socialist politics are explicitly on display here. Its description of the capitalist class forming an organised, totalitarian, violent oligarchy to crush the working-class forewarned in some detail the Fascist dictatorships of Europe. Given it was written in 1908, this prediction was somewhat uncanny, as Trotsky noted while commenting on the book in the 30s.

In 1905 the troops of the Tsar crushed the Russian revolution of 1905. Although the uprising did force Nicholas II to establish a consitution and a parliament, the Russian revolution of 1917 would change the face of the world. However, the uprising also had the interesting effect of inspiring two of the more interesting utopian novels of the early 20th century. One was "Red Star," the socialist utopia on Mars created by the Russian writer Alexander Bogdanov, a Bolshevik and intimate of Lenin. The other was "The Iron Heel," by Jack London, the American author best known for "The Call of the Wild." Whereas Bogdanov forsees the ultimate victory of the socialist and scientific-technical revolutions, London predicts global revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces ending up in an apocalyptic battle betwen the impoverished workers and the privileged minorities. Consequently, the two authors share a common socialist perspective, although Bogdanov writes a utopian novel and London creates a dystopia.

"The Iron Heel" was written in 1908 and remains one of the more prophetic novels of the 20th century. His track record with regards to a national secrety police agency, the rise of Fascism, the creation of attractive suburbs for the middle class while the unemployed and menials live in "ghettoes," is remarkedly better than that of Edward Belleamy's "Looking Backward," Aldoux Huxley's "Brave New World," or George Orwell's "1984," the novels that are usually judged by their prescience in terms of utopian literature.

The novel presents the story of the American revolutionary Earnest Everhard, as told by his wife Avis, who is actually the more effective revolutionary leader. London tells how the manuscript was unknown for seven centuries, to be discovered long after the final triumph of socialist democracy in the yar 419 B.O.M. Avis Everhard describes the struggles of the working masses against the oligarchy, and how they were ruthlessly suppressed, especially in the Chicago Commune that is the main setting for the action. There is a strong current of violence, with Black Hundreds wrecking the socialist presses,a bomb exploding in the House of Representatives, and revolutionaries being hunted down by the military arm of the government known as the Iron Heel. The Everhard Manuscript breaks off in the middle of a sentence, a footnote explaining that history does not know if the author escaped or was captured.

The story is somewhat atypical for London in that it does not represent the white supermacist and male dominant vision of the world we usually find in his novels. London's message is the blatant warning that if you allow the Revolution to be defeated, then the ruling class will "grind you revolutionists down under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces." Ultimately "The Iron Heel" is a novel whose importance clearly outstrips its literary quality. The problem is that with the end of World War II and the defeat (essentially) of Fascism that London's novel was no longer of interest as the world was confronted with a new set of problems. Yet, London's dytopian novel is one of the works in that genre that deserves to be reconsidered more often