The Call of the Wild
First edition cover
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| Author | Jack London |
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| Illustrator | Philip R. Goodwin and Charles Livingston Bull |
| Cover artist | Charles Edward Hooper |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Adventure fiction |
| Publisher | Macmillan |
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Publication date
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1903 |
| Media type | Print (Serial, Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 231 pp (First Edition) |
| OCLC | 28228581 |
The Call of the Wild is a short adventure novel by Jack London published in 1903 and set in Yukon, Canada during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, when strong sled dogs were in high demand. The central character of the novel is a dog named Buck. The story opens at a ranch in Santa Clara Valley, California, when Buck is stolen from his home and sold into service as a sled dog in Alaska. He becomes progressively feral in the harsh environment, where he is forced to fight to survive and dominate other dogs. By the end, he sheds the veneer of civilization, and relies on primordial instinct and learned experience to emerge as a leader in the wild.
London spent almost a year in the Yukon collecting material for the book. The story was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in the summer of 1903 and was published a month later in book form. The book’s great popularity and success made a reputation for London; much of its appeal derives from its simplicity as a tale of survival. As early as 1923, the story was adapted to film, and it has since seen several more cinematic adaptations.
The story opens with Buck, a large and powerful St. Bernard-Scotch Shepherd, living happily in California's Santa Clara Valley as the pet of Judge Miller. He is stolen by the gardener's assistant, however, sold to fund the latter's gambling addiction, and shipped to Seattle. Put in a crate, he is starved and ill-treated. When released, he attacks the "man in the red sweater" but is badly beaten and taught to respect the "law of the club". Buck is then sold to a pair of French-Canadian dispatchers from the Canadian government, François and Perrault, who take him with them to the Klondike region of Canada. There, they train him as a sled dog. From his teammates, he quickly learns to survive cold winter nights and the pack society. A rivalry develops between Buck and the vicious, quarrelsome lead dog, Spitz. Buck eventually beats Spitz in a fight "to the death". Spitz is killed by the pack after his defeat by Buck, and Buck eventually becomes the leader of the team.
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