Jack London,Group members： Kiwi Lesley Jackie Eudora Maia,Jack Londons Credo,I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.,我宁愿是燃烧过后的灰烬也不愿为地上的灰尘！ 我宁愿让点点星火猛烈燃烧殆尽也不愿任其干腐。 我宁愿做一闪而过的流星，让每一点碎片都擦出火光，也不愿做死寂的恒星。 人的职责是生活，而不是存在。 我不会浪费时间试图延长寿命。 但，我会用尽生命中的每一秒。,Brief introduction,He was a realism and naturalism novelist, journalist, short story writer and essayist as well as social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. London was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers and wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics such as his dystopian novel, The Iron Heel and The People of the Abyss.,Jack London (1876 - 1916),Early life,London at the age of nine with his dog Rollo, 1885,Jack London was born in San Francisco of an unmarried mother of wealthy background, Flora Wellman. His father may have been William Chaney , a journalist, lawyer, and major figure in the development of American astrology(占星术). Because Flora was ill, Jack was raised at an early age by an ex-slave, Virginia Prentiss, who had a great influence on the boy while he grew up.,Early life,As a schoolboy, London often studied at Heinolds First and Last Chance Saloon, a port-side bar in Oakland. At 17, he confessed to the bars owner, John Heinold, his desire to attend university and pursue a career as a writer. Heinold lent London tuition money to attend college.,When he was in his teens, the boy adopted the name of Jack. He worked at various hard labor jobs, pirated for oysters(偷捕牡蛎） on San Francisco Bay, served on a fish patrol(巡逻船）to capture poachers(偷捕者), sailed the Pacific on a sealing ship, joined Kellys Army of unemployed working men, hoboed(流浪) around the country, and returned to attend high school at age 19. In the process, he got to know some ideas about socialism and was known as the Boy Socialist of Oakland for his street corner speech. He would run unsuccessfully several times on the socialist ticket as mayor. He read a lot of books, and consciously chose to become a writer to escape from the terrible life as a factory worker. He studied other writers and began to submit stories, jokes and poems to various publications, mostly without success.,Writer Rancher Sailor,Gold rush and first success,On July 12, 1897, London (age 21) and his sisters husband Captain Shepard sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush. This was the setting for some of his first successful stories. Londons time in the Klondike, however, was detrimental to his health. Like so many other men who were malnourished in the goldfields, London developed scurvy. London left Oakland with a social conscience and socialist leanings; he returned to become an activist for socialism. He concluded that his only hope of escaping the work “trap“ was to get an education and “sell his brains“. He saw his writing as a business, his ticket out of poverty, and, he hoped, a means of beating the wealthy at their own game. On returning to California in 1898, London began working deliberately to get published, a struggle described in his novel, Martin Eden (serialized in 1908, published in 1909). London began his writing career just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines. This resulted in a boom in popular magazines aimed at a wide public and a strong market for short fiction.,War correspondent,London accepted an assignment of the San Francisco Examiner to cover the Russo-Japanese War in early 1904, arriving in Yokohama（横滨） on January 25, 1904. He was arrested by Japanese authorities in Shimonoseki(马关), but released due to the intervention of American ambassador Lloyd Griscom.,Bohemian club,On August 18, 1904, London went with his close friend, the poet George Sterling, to “Summer High Jinks” at the Bohemian（波西米亚的） Grove. London was elected to honorary membership in the Bohemian Club and took part in many activities.,Beauty ranch,In 1905, London purchased a 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) ranch in California, on the eastern slope ofSonoma Mountain, for $26,450.He wrote: “Next to my wife, the ranch is the dearest thing in the world to me.“ He desperately wanted the ranch to become a successful business enterprise. Writing, always a commercial enterprise with London, now became even more a means to an end: “I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.“ After 1910, his literary works were mostly potboilers, w