White Fang by Jack London - Antique Book, Call of the Wild, Alaska Gold Rush, Yukon, 1920s

White Fang by Jack London continues The Call of the Wild in the story of a wolfdog's fight for survival against his kind and the Northland Wild.

Written by Jack London. Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull. Reprint circa 1920s. Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, New York.

CHAPTER I
The Trail of the Meat

"Dark spruce forest frowned on either side of the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter more terrible than any sadness - a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild."

In writing The Call of the Wild and the sequel, White Fang, Jack London (1876 - 1916) intended to depict the simple honesty, however brutal, inherent in the "survival of the fittest".

"Time and again, and many times, in my narratives, I wrote, speaking of my dog-heroes: "He did not think these things; he merely did them," etc. And I did this repeatedly, to the clogging of my narrative and in violation of my artistic canons; and I did it in order to hammer into the average human understanding that these dog-heroes of mine were not directed by abstract reasoning, but by instinct, sensation and emotion, and by simple reasoning."

PLEASE NOTE: This is NOT a first edition. Wild Fang was first published by Macmillan in 1906. But this later reprint is often listed as the first edition due to misattributing the publication date on the copyright page to Grosset & Dunlap. Grosset & Dunlap specialized in reprints and usually retained the copyright date of the original publisher. "Set up and electrotyped. Published October 1906" is Macmillan's publication date.

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Condition*: Very Good. Missing dust jacket. Illustrated pastedown on yellow/gold cloth cover. Cover boards: Corners bumped; mild shelfwear; beginning to fray at head and tale of the spine; lightly soiled from handling. Inside: Inscription in pencil on front flyleaf, dated May 1931; small round stain on text block; pages are tanned else clean, undamaged, and complete.

* Based on guidelines of the Independent Online Booksellers' Association.