Research Resources

Doing a term paper or scholarly essay? Either of these two compilations may help. Each author approaches the timing of London's writings in a different way. Due to their length, the reports are in WORD format for easy download and printing.

For studies of individual books or stories, refer to our Bibliographies tab.

Jack London's Nonfiction: A Full Bibliography (Word file)

by Dale E. Walker

The late Walker developed this listing that originally appeared in his No Mentor But Myself (Kennicott Press, 1079). The essays and journal articles are alphabetical by title, followed by full publication information. With over 320 entries, the bibliography covers the wide range of publishers, from children's magazines and national magazines to newspaper articles.

Jack London's Works by Date of Composition (Word file)

By James Williams

Jay Williams edited the Jack London Journal while at the University of Chicago. He became interested in the actual arc of London's writing career. London began serious publishing in 1899. Williams discovered London was an active writer earlier, and continued to compose during his various travels of the 1890s. By knowing when London wrote a story or novel, one can better place London's inspiration within the context of the time. Williams's report explains the reasoning behind the dating and the sources he used, many from the Archives at the Huntington Library.

The Fiction of Jack London: A Chronological Biography (Word File)

Compiled and Annotated by Dale E. Walker, with Research Assistance of James E. Sisson, III and Daniel J. Wichlan

In 1970, Dale Walker of the University of Texas in El Paso worked with the assistance of James E. Sisson, III, to create a chronological biography of Jack's publications. (This contrasts with Williams's date of actual writing above.) At that time, no list existed of London's short story magazine publications. A librarian interested in London, Sisson was well-equipped to make the necessary searches. Walker prepared some annotations, wrote the Forward, and found a publisher, the University of Texas Western Press. As Walker discovered: "Almost instantly, a few errors were discovered among the London cognoscenti: some stories were in incorrect order, a volume or page number was wrong, and so on. But the book had but a single printing, Jim Sisson died in Berkeley in November, 1986, 33 years passed and computers, the internet, and e-mail, became commonplace before a new, corrected, updated edition could appear."

In 2005, Walker was introduced to another London bibliographer, Daniel Wichlan. They collaborated to correct and update the original work.

The files are arranged so separate sections or pages can be selected for printout. They include the original Forward, the Revised Introduction, the Chronological Bibliography with notations, List of Books by Jack London, A Chronology of Jack's Life, an Appendix, Index, and list of Selected Sources. The total is 69 pages in letter-sized format.

An example of the bibliography and notations suggests the rich resource herein:

       14. "In a Far Country" — Overland Monthly, v. 33 (June 1899), 540-549. [SOW]

Franklin Walker says this tale "clearly owes a good deal to Conrad's story" ("An Outpost of Progress" which had appeared the year before in the volume Tales of Unrest). See Walker's Jack London and the Klondike: The Genesis of an Ameri­can Writer (San Marino, Calif.: The Huntington Library, 1966), p. 239, hereafter cited as Jack London and the Klondike. W. Somerset Maugham also wrote of a similar situation in the story "The Outstation”.  London received $7.50 for this story.

15. “The Priestly Prerogative" — Overland Monthly, v. 34 (July 1899), 59-65. [SOW]

      London had originally titled this story “Father Roubeau’s Confession”.  He received $7.50 for it.

16. “The Handsome Cabin Boy" — The Owl Magazine, v. 7 (July 1899), 45-50. [JLSA]

London received $1.50 on August 20, 1899 for this "skit" as he called it. "But it more than paid for the stamps I had wasted on the thing …," he said (Letters of Jack London, p. 102), In the story "In a Far Country" (entry 14), he had mentioned "The Handsome Cabin Boy" as one of the Klondikers' songs.