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The Call of the Wild
by LONDON, Jack
- Used
- first
- Condition
- See description
- Seller
-
East Woodstock, Connecticut, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: MacMillan Co., 1903. First Edition, in dustjacket with variant lettering at base of spine. Decorations by Charles Edward Hooper and illustrated by Phillip Goodwin and Charles Livingston Bull. London's classic north country adventure novel. Uncommon in dustjacket. Near Fine, mild wear at spine ends and cover corners, contemporary date in ink at verso of frontis, in attractive Very Good dustjacket, split at front spine edge but rather seamlessly mended at verso with archival tape, nick at top front panel.
Synopsis
Jack London’s The Call of the Wild is an anthropomorphic canine’s unforgettable tale of survival. Set during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, the novel’s main character, Buck, a large and powerful St. Bernard-Scotch Shepherd, is stolen from his ranch home in Santa Clara Valley, California, and sold into service as a sled dog. At first, Buck experiences violence and struggles for survival, becoming progressively feral in the harsh environment. By the end, Buck relies on his instinct and learned experience to emerge as the proven leader of the pack. In The Call of the Wild, author Jack London blends his experience as a gold prospector in the Canadian wilderness with his ideas about nature and the struggle for existence, influenced by the work of Darwin and Nietzsche. Thus, although the novel is first and foremost a story about a dog, it displays a philosophical depth absent in most animal adventures. In the summer of 1903, the story was first serialized in four installments in The Saturday Evening Post, which paid $750 for it. Soon after, London sold all rights to The Call of the Wild to Macmillan, which published the story in book format in August of that same year. As the first printing of 10,000 copies sold out immediately, it is safe to say the novel was enormously popular from the moment it was published. It has since secured its place in the canon of American literature. Today, The Call of the Wild is still one of the best-known stories written by an American author and has been published in almost 50 languages. The Call of the Wild is ranked 35th on The Guardian’s list of the 100 best novels and 88th on Modern Library’s “100 Best” English-language novels of the 20th century.
Read More: Identifying first editions of The Call of the Wild
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Details
- Bookseller
- Yesterday's Gallery, ABAA
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 37336
- Title
- The Call of the Wild
- Author
- LONDON, Jack
- Book Condition
- Used
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Publisher
- MacMillan Co.
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1903
- Weight
- 0.00 lbs
Terms of Sale
Yesterday's Gallery, ABAA
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Yesterday's Gallery, ABAA
Biblio member since 2020
East Woodstock, Connecticut
About Yesterday's Gallery, ABAA
For the past many years this firm has strived to provide a large, high quality, and diverse collection of mostly fiction published primarily before the Second World War and with their original dustjackets. Our specialties include Photoplay Editions, Mysteries, Fantasy Literature, Plays, Romances, Westerns, Hollywood Interest, and Business Fiction. We also have a large collection of Cocktail Recipe Books, Children's Literature and 19th Century Literature. We pride ourselves on providing accurately described, high grade, and difficult to locate titles in these fiction genres.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Verso
- The page bound on the left side of a book, opposite to the recto page.
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
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