Accounts of dare-devil exploits have always been read with deep interest. One of the salient features of human nature is curiosity, a desire to know what is being said and done outside the narrow limits of one's individual experience, or, in other words, to learn the modes of life of persons whose environment and problems are different from one's own environment and problems. To this natural curiosity, the book of travel is particularly gratifying. But when we add to the fact that such a narrative treats of races and conditions almost unknown to the inhabitants of civilised countries the consideration that those voyageurs to whom the adventures fell are men and women already prominently before the public, and so deserving of that public's special confidence, the interest and value of such a work will be seen to be extraordinarily enhanced. The cruise of Jack London's forty-five-foot ketch Snark was followed eagerly by the press of several continents. The Snark alone was enough to compel attention, but the Snark sailed by Jack London, a writer of world-wide celebrity, was irresistible. The venture caught the world's fancy. Periodicals devoted columns to a discussion of the Snark and her builder, and to the daring crew who sailed the tiny craft for two years through the South Seas. When it became known that such a voyage was in contemplation, hundreds of persons wrote to Mr. London, begging that he allow them to accompany him. On the other extreme, they were legion who threw up their hands in horror at the mere suggestion....

The South Seas charts the idea of the South Seas in popular cultural productions of the English-speaking world, from the beginnings of the Western enterprise in the Pacific until the eve of the Pacific War. Building on the notion that the influences on the creation of a text, and the ways in which its audience receives the text, are essential for understanding the historical significance of particular productions, Sean Brawley and Chris Dixon explore the ways in which authors’ and producers’ ideas about the South Seas were “haunted” by others who had written on the subject, and how they in turn influenced future generations of knowledge producers. The South Seas is unique in its examination of an array of cultural texts. Along with the foundational literary texts that established and perpetuated the South Seas tradition in written form, the authorsexplore diverse cultural forms such as art, music, theater, film, fairs, platform speakers, surfing culture, and tourism.

A biography of the well-known author that concentrates on his 1907-1909 South Sea voyage.

This particular Jack London collection mirrors the incredible adventurous life of the author, it shows all the things he witnessed and experienced on his travels. Besides being a novelist, journalist and social activist – Jack London was also a railroad hobo, gold prospector, sailor, an oyster pirate, rancher, war correspondent... Novels The Cruise of the Dazzler A Daughter of the Snows The Call of the Wild The Sea-Wolf White Fang Burning Daylight Adventure The Scarlet Plague A Son of the Sun The Abysmal Brute The Mutiny of the Elsinore Jerry of the Islands Michael, Brother of Jerry Hearts of Three Short Stories Son of the Wolf The White Silence The Son of the Wolf The Men of Forty Mile In a Far Country To the Man on the Trail The Priestly Prerogative The Wisdom of the Trail The Wife of a King An Odyssey of the North The God of His Fathers: Tales of the Klondike The God of His Fathers The Great Interrogation Which Make Men Remember Siwash The Man with the Gash Jan, the Unrepentant Grit of Women Where the Trail Forks A Daughter of the Aurora At the Rainbow's End The Scorn of Women Children of the Frost In the Forests of the North The Law of Life Nam-Bok the Unveracious The Master of Mystery The Sunlanders The Sickness of Lone Chief Keesh, the Son of Keesh The Death of Ligoun Li Wan, the Fair The League of the Old Men The Faith of Men & Other Stories A Relic of the Pliocene A Hyperborean Brew The Faith of Men Too Much Gold The One Thousand Dozen The Marriage of Lit-lit Bâtard The Story of Jees Uck Tales of the Fish Patrol White and Yellow The King of the Greeks A Raid on the Oyster Pirates The Siege of the "Lancashire Queen" Charley's Coup Demetrios Contos Yellow Handkerchief Lost Face South Sea Tales The House of Pride & Other Tales of Hawaii Smoke Bellew The Red One On the Makaloa Mat Dutch Courage & Other Stories Memoirs The Road The Cruise of the Snark Through The Rapids on the Way to the Klondike From Dawson to the Sea Our Adventures in Tampico