1876-1886

1876-1886

Flora Wellman

William H. Chaney

John London

Born John Griffith Chaney on January 12, 1876 in San Francisco, son of Astrologer William H. Chaney and Flora Wellman, a wealthy, unmarried woman. William Chaney denies paternity and disappears. While Flora recuperates from difficulties of childbirth, the infant is suckled by Daphna Virginia “Jennie” Prentiss. The wet nurse, a former slave, remains close to Jack all of his life. Through Mrs. Prentiss, Flora meets John London.

(There are several accounts of the birth of Jack London. In one such account, Jack London is born Jack Sailor, in San Francisco, California on January 12, 1876. He grew up with his mother, Flora Sailor, and a few years into his life, his stepfather, John London. His father was unknown, for he had not wed Flora when she had conceived, but he was thought to be William Cheney, a journalist, lawyer, and major figure in the development of American astrology. Young Jack could have been considered a "workaholic" if living in the present day. He worked in a factory as a kid, and one day, at the young age of 14, Jack worked for 36 consecutive hours.)

Late in 1876, Flora married John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran. In 1877 Eliza and Ida, John London's daughters from a previous marriage, are removed from the Protestant Orphan Asylum, on Haight between Laguna and Buchanan, in San Francisco to join the London family household. In 1878 Jack and his stepsister Eliza both suffer near-fatal attacks of diphtheria. To escape the growing epidemic, the London family moves from San Francisco to Oakland, where Jack completed grade school. Though the family was working class, it was not so impoverished as London's later accounts claimed.

Ina Coolbrith

Jack had little formal schooling. Initially, he attended school only through the 8th grade. He was, however, an avid reader, educating himself at public libraries, especially the Oakland Public Library under the tutelage of Ina Coolbrith, who later became the first poet laureate of California. Later, Jack returned to high school in Oakland and graduated. He eventually gained admittance to the University of California at Berkeley, but stayed only for six months, finding it to be “not alive enough” and a “passionless pursuit of passionless intelligence”.

The memory of Jack London's early life was etched and scarred by the bitterness of poverty. His family was continually on the move to find subsistence. At the age of ten he was on the street selling newspapers to supplement the family's meager income. For fourteen years thereafter, until his first writing success at twenty-four, life was one vicious, downward cycle of toil, escape, toil, escape, toil. He became a "work beast" laboring in a cannery, a jute mill, a laundry, and shoveling coal in a power station. He worked for ten cents an hour, thirteen to fourteen hours a day, six and seven days a week. Is it any wonder that he saw life in terms of man's unending struggle against a ruthless nature? It is not surprising that he saw in socialism a chance for the salvation of others as lost as he had once been.