Jack London's Women The story of the women in the life of an
American icon At age twenty-three, Jack London (1876–1916) sold
his first story, and within six years he was the highest paid
and most widely read writer in America. To account for his
success, he created a fiction of himself as the quintessential
self-made man. But as Clarice Stasz demonstrates in this
absorbing collective biography, London always relied on a circle
of women who nurtured him, sheltered him, and fostered his
legacy. Using newly available letters and diaries from private
collections, Stasz brings this diverse constellation of women to
life. London was the son of freethinking Flora Wellman, yet
found more maternal comfort from freed slave Jennie Prentiss and
his stepsister Eliza. His early loves included a British-born
consumptive, a Jewish socialist, and an African American. His
first wife, Bess Maddern, was a teacher and devoted mother to
daughters Bess and Joan, while his second wife, Charmian
Kittredge, shared his passion for adve