THE CALL OF THE WILD by LONDON, Jack - 1903

First Edition, stated third printing (August 1903), with the original, unrestored, dust-jacket. Publisher's original olive hard cloth with a depiction of a dog sled scene in three landscape sections in dark pink, olive green and white, on the front cover, and a matching illustration of the lead sled dog from the front cover repeated on the spine. Gilt title lettering to front and spine. Top edge of the pages gilt. Illustrated endpapers and titlepage (with tissue-guard), ten coloured plates and numerous full-page illustrations by Philip Goodwin and Charles Livingstone Bull, numerous textual decorations by Charles Edward Hooper. With the two page advertisement in the rear. An extremely fresh and bright copy, with just a small bump to top right corner of front board and some very light spots of rubbing at joints of spine with boards, barely discernible. The jacket is faded on the spine with a small stain, two short, closed, tears at top edge of back panel and three miniscule chips around joints and an area of discolouration to the rear panel. Internally, there is an area of light foxing to the final text page plus some light toning to pastedowns and verso of half-title page. In short, this is an extremely bright and clean first edition copy of one of the cornerstones of twentieth century American literature, with no old signatures or makings of any kind in the text.

'The Call of the Wild' was originally written for the pulp market. It first came out in four instalments in 'Saturday Evening Post', which bought the novella in 1903 for $750. That same year, London sold all rights to the story for $2,500 to Macmillan, which published it in book format in an initial run of 10,000 copies. Is has never been out of print since.