Martin Eden

Published in 1909, this semi-autobiographical novel concerns the struggles of the eponymous hero, an aspiring writer, born into poverty, who seeks to achieve bourgeois respectability in order to win the love of Ruth Morse, a university-educated young woman of a higher social class. Though he attains literary success, it does not bring happiness.

Jack London (1876-1916) was born in San Francisco, the illegitimate son of a music teacher whose lover spurned her after she refused an abortion. His writings dealt with his social activism and care for the worker. Largely self-educated, London became a sailor, a hobo, a gold miner, and a socialist—all of which would find their way into his fiction.