The People of the Abyss

by Jack London

Overview

In 1902, in order to gain material for this book, a young Jack London posed as a sailor stranded in London's East End. Far from the open wildernesses associated with most of his novels, Jack London lived on the street with the destitute and starving.

Not just another literary masterpiece, this book is a major sociological study. While other American writers in London were blinded by the glories of the British Empire at its peak, Jack London was examining the misery found in the heart of the wealthy city.

In this highly accessible work of reporting, Jack London lets the facts speak for themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781985276710
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	02/28/2018
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.34(d)

About the Author

John Griffith "Jack" London was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer in the world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first writers to become a worldwide celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing.

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. The descent; 2. Johnny Upright; 3. My lodging and some others; 4. A man and the abyss; 5. Those on the edge; 6. Frying-Pan Alley and a glimpse of the inferno; 7. A winner of the Victoria Cross; 8. The carter and the carpenter; 9. The spike; 10. Carrying the banner; 11. The peg; 12. Coronation day; 13. Dan Cullen, docker; 14. Hops and hoppers; 15. The sea wife; 16. Property v. person; 17. Inefficiency; 18. Wages; 19. The ghetto; 20. Coffee-houses and doss-houses; 21. The precariousness of life; 22. Suicide; 23. The children; 24. A vision of the night; 25. The hunger wail; 26. Drink, temperance and thrift; 27. The management.

Editorial Reviews

It is written with the smoldering anger of turn-of-the-century revolutionary socialism. There are no gray shadings in London's economic world. There is only the evil of capitalism and the saintly suffering of the poor. The rich had had their stories told in mass periodicals, and London felt it was time to let the ignored speak. He thus wrote the biographies of the people who have been exploited by imperialism and capitalism. This is the book that counters the Horatio Alger story. For every Alger, for every Rockefeller, there is a mass of sufferers whose plight enabled the speedy rise to wealth of a few. In its sociological and journalistic documentation of poverty is a call for direct action. Wealth blinds, and London makes us see. With this reprinting of London's incredibly important and readable book, Pluto Press and London remind us of how economic exploitation must always be fought, that we must always be educated in the lives of the unfortunate.

James Williams

No other book of mine took so much of my young heart and tears as that study of the economic degradation of the poor.

Jack London