TALES OF THE FISH PATROL; By Jack London

Cleveland New York: International Fiction Library, 1905. First Thus (presumably reprints the Perry Mason Co. Boston edition from 1905). Cloth. Fine/Near Fine. 8vo (7 5/8" x 5 1/4"), red cloth with black lettering and B&W silhouette logo of a girl with book facing a similar boy inside a sylized room flanked by globes and prisms, archival mylar-protected pictorial dust jacket (bevelled edges; seemingly not price-clipped but with no price indicated) depicting stylized Fu Manchu-like long-mustached Chinese pirate against a red shadow as he holds a sailboat in his claw-like long-nailed hand, 243 pages. Exceedingly RARE and Fine copy in an Extraordinary dust jacket. Clean, tight, bright in a brilliant, sharp dust jacket (very slightly rubbed). First copyrighted by the Perry Mason Company in 1905, which serialized the tales in 7 issues of The Youth's Companion, Vol. 79, during February & March, 1905. The Macmillan Company, New York, also published their edition in 1905 with a colorful cover with sailboat, frontispiece and 7 plates. William Heinemann, London, also published these tales in 1905 with illustrations by George Varian. Jack London (born John Chaney; 1876 - 1916) was a bestselling American novelist, journalist, early science fiction writer, and social activist. His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush; a dystopian novel, The Iron Heel; plus non-fiction exposés The People of the Abyss, and The War of the Classes. His short story "To Build a Fire" has become a classic. London also wrote about the Pacific Rim in stories such as "The Pearls of Parlay," "The Heathen," and TALES OF THE FISH PATROL. As a youth, London had engaged in the dangerous plunder of oyster beds around San Francisco Bay. This collection of seven short stories recalls those rough years when he shifted from piracy to work on the Fish Patrol that struggled to protect fish and oysters from fearful pirates.