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"OPENED A NEW ERA OF LITERATURE"
The Call of the Wild "The Call of the Wild is the greatest dog story ever written and is at the same time a study of one of the most curious and profound motives that play hide-and-seek in the human soul." -Carl Sandburg FIRST APPEARANCE OF JACK LONDON'S MASTERPIECE, serialized in The Saturday Evening Post; precedes the first edition in book form. "On January 26, 1903, Jack London submitted the completed manuscript of The Call of the Wild to The Saturday Evening Post. On February 12 the editor agreed to purchase the story if he would cut it by five thousand words, and they asked him to set his price. Jack agreed to shorten it and set the price at three cents a word. On March 3 he received a check for seven hundred and fifty dollars. Twenty-two days later Macmillan bought the book rights for two thousand dollars with a promise to give it extensive advertising... If Jack had known at the time that his book would become a classic in American literature, and the royalties from it would have made him wealthy, he would have bargained differently... The book was a passport to instant world acclaim. It not only became a classic, but it also opened a new era of literature. Mush was out, and courageous, raw red-blooded life was in. The Call of the Wild proved that realism was what the new generation wanted... The book has never been out of print during the last one hundred years, and critics still rave about it" (Kingman, A Pictorial Life of Jack London). Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull and Philip R. Godwin. Complete in five issues of The Saturday Evening Post. Philadelphia: 20 June - 18 July, 1903. Folio, original wrappers; custom cloth box. Small shipping label on front wrappers. Mild wear and a few closed marginal tears; Call of the Wild pages generally fine. A well-preserved collection. $2200. |
