A New Forest Childhood: 1903 - 1916

The Life of Edvard Munch

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John Griffith London born John Griffith Chaney ; [1] January 12, — November 22, [2] [3] [4] [5] 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.

He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction. London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism , and the rights of workers. In San Francisco, Flora worked as a music teacher and spiritualist , claiming to channel the spirit of a Sauk chief, Black Hawk. Whether Wellman and Chaney were legally married is unknown. Most San Francisco civil records were destroyed by the extensive fires that followed the earthquake ; nobody knows what name appeared on her son's birth certificate.

Stasz notes that in his memoirs, Chaney refers to London's mother Flora Wellman as having been his "wife"; he also cites an advertisement in which Flora called herself "Florence Wellman Chaney". According to Flora Wellman's account, as recorded in the San Francisco Chronicle of June 4, , Chaney demanded that she have an abortion. When she refused, he disclaimed responsibility for the child. In desperation, she shot herself.

She was not seriously wounded, but she was temporarily deranged. After giving birth, Flora turned the baby over for care to Virginia Prentiss, an African-American woman and former slave.

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She was a major maternal figure throughout London's life. Late in , Flora Wellman married John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran, and brought her baby John, later known as Jack, to live with the newly married couple.

The family moved around the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Oakland , where London completed public grade school. In , when he was 21 and a student at the University of California, Berkeley , London searched for and read the newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and the name of his biological father. He wrote to William Chaney, then living in Chicago. Chaney responded that he could not be London's father because he was impotent; he casually asserted that London's mother had relations with other men and averred that she had slandered him when she said he insisted on an abortion.

Chaney concluded by saying that he was more to be pitied than London. The house burned down in the fire after the San Francisco earthquake ; the California Historical Society placed a plaque at the site in Although the family was working class, it was not as impoverished as London's later accounts claimed [ citation needed ]. London was largely self-educated [ citation needed ].

In , London found and read Ouida 's long Victorian novel Signa. She later became California's first poet laureate and an important figure in the San Francisco literary community. Seeking a way out, he borrowed money from his foster mother Virginia Prentiss, bought the sloop Razzle-Dazzle from an oyster pirate named French Frank, and became an oyster pirate himself. London hired on as a member of the California Fish Patrol.

In , he signed on to the sealing schooner Sophie Sutherland , bound for the coast of Japan. When he returned, the country was in the grip of the panic of '93 and Oakland was swept by labor unrest. After grueling jobs in a jute mill and a street-railway power plant, London joined Coxey's Army and began his career as a tramp. In The Road , he wrote:. Man-handling was merely one of the very minor unprintable horrors of the Erie County Pen.

I say 'unprintable'; and in justice I must also say undescribable. They were unthinkable to me until I saw them, and I was no spring chicken in the ways of the world and the awful abysses of human degradation. It would take a deep plummet to reach bottom in the Erie County Pen, and I do but skim lightly and facetiously the surface of things as I there saw them. After many experiences as a hobo and a sailor, he returned to Oakland and attended Oakland High School.

He contributed a number of articles to the high school's magazine, The Aegis. His first published work was "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan", an account of his sailing experiences. At 17, he confessed to the bar's owner, John Heinold, his desire to attend university and pursue a career as a writer.

Heinold lent London tuition money to attend college. London desperately wanted to attend the University of California, Berkeley. In , after a summer of intense studying to pass certification exams, he was admitted. Financial circumstances forced him to leave in and he never graduated. No evidence suggests that London wrote for student publications while studying at Berkeley. While at Berkeley, London continued to study and spend time at Heinold's saloon, where he was introduced to the sailors and adventurers who would influence his writing.

In his autobiographical novel, John Barleycorn , London mentioned the pub's likeness seventeen times. Heinold's was the place where London met Alexander McLean, a captain known for his cruelty at sea. This was the setting for some of his first successful stories. London's time in the harsh Klondike , however, was detrimental to his health. Like so many other men who were malnourished in the goldfields, London developed scurvy.

His gums became swollen, leading to the loss of his four front teeth. A constant gnawing pain affected his hip and leg muscles, and his face was stricken with marks that always reminded him of the struggles he faced in the Klondike. Father William Judge , "The Saint of Dawson ", had a facility in Dawson that provided shelter, food and any available medicine to London and others.

His struggles there inspired London's short story, " To Build a Fire " , revised in , [A] which many critics assess as his best.

The brothers' father, Judge Hiram Bond , was a wealthy mining investor. The Bonds, especially Hiram, were active Republicans. Marshall Bond's diary mentions friendly sparring with London on political issues as a camp pastime.

London left Oakland with a social conscience and socialist leanings; he returned to become an activist for socialism. He concluded that his only hope of escaping the work "trap" was to get an education and "sell his brains". He saw his writing as a business, his ticket out of poverty, and, he hoped, a means of beating the wealthy at their own game.

On returning to California in , London began working to get published, a struggle described in his novel, Martin Eden serialized in , published in His first published story since high school was "To the Man On Trail", which has frequently been collected in anthologies. London began his writing career just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines. This resulted in a boom in popular magazines aimed at a wide public audience and a strong market for short fiction.

London told some of his critics that man's actions are the main cause of the behavior of their animals, and he would show this in another story, The Call of the Wild. Macmillan's promotional campaign propelled it to swift success.

While living at his rented villa on Lake Merritt in Oakland, California, London met poet George Sterling ; in time they became best friends. In , Sterling helped London find a home closer to his own in nearby Piedmont. In his letters London addressed Sterling as "Greek", owing to Sterling's aquiline nose and classical profile, and he signed them as "Wolf".

In later life London indulged his wide-ranging interests by accumulating a personal library of 15, volumes. He referred to his books as "the tools of my trade". Bess had been part of his circle of friends for a number of years. Stasz says, "Both acknowledged publicly that they were not marrying out of love, but from friendship and a belief that they would produce sturdy children. Jack had made it clear to Bessie that he did not love her, but that he liked her enough to make a successful marriage. Bessie, who tutored at Anderson's University Academy in Alameda California, tutored Jack in preparation for his entrance exams for the University of California at Berkeley in Jacobs was killed aboard the USAT Scandia in , but Jack and Bessie continued their friendship, which included taking photos and developing the film together.

During the marriage, London continued his friendship with Anna Strunsky , co-authoring The Kempton-Wace Letters , an epistolary novel contrasting two philosophies of love. Anna, writing "Dane Kempton's" letters, arguing for a romantic view of marriage, while London, writing "Herbert Wace's" letters, argued for a scientific view, based on Darwinism and eugenics. In the novel, his fictional character contrasted two women he had known. Both children were born in Piedmont , California.

Here London wrote one of his most celebrated works, The Call of the Wild. While London had pride in his children, the marriage was strained. Kingman says that by the couple were close to separation as they were "extremely incompatible". When I tell her morality is only evidence of low blood pressure, she hates me. She'd sell me and the children out for her damned purity. Every time I come back after being away from home for a night she won't let me be in the same room with her if she can help it. Stasz writes that these were "code words for [Bess's] fear that [Jack] was consorting with prostitutes and might bring home venereal disease.

On July 24, , London told Bessie he was leaving and moved out. During , London and Bess negotiated the terms of a divorce, and the decree was granted on November 11, He was arrested by Japanese authorities in Shimonoseki , but released through the intervention of American ambassador Lloyd Griscom. After travelling to Korea , he was again arrested by Japanese authorities for straying too close to the border with Manchuria without official permission, and was sent back to Seoul.

Released again, London was permitted to travel with the Imperial Japanese Army to the border, and to observe the Battle of the Yalu. London asked William Randolph Hearst , the owner of the San Francisco Examiner , to be allowed to transfer to the Imperial Russian Army , where he felt that restrictions on his reporting and his movements would be less severe.

However, before this could be arranged, he was arrested for a third time in four months, this time for assaulting his Japanese assistants, whom he accused of stealing the fodder for his horse.

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Released through the personal intervention of President Theodore Roosevelt , London departed the front in June London was elected to honorary membership in the Bohemian Club and took part in many activities. It was described as too difficult to set to music. After divorcing Maddern, London married Charmian Kittredge in London was injured when he fell from a buggy, and Netta arranged for Charmian to care for him.

The two developed a friendship, as Charmian, Netta, her husband Roscoe, and London were politically aligned with socialist causes. At some point the relationship became romantic, and Jack divorced his wife to marry Charmian, who was five years his senior [38]. Biographer Russ Kingman called Charmian "Jack's soul-mate, always at his side, and a perfect match. The couple also visited Goldfield , Nevada, in , where they were guests of the Bond brothers, London's Dawson City landlords.

The Bond brothers were working in Nevada as mining engineers. Joseph Noel calls the events from to "a domestic drama that would have intrigued the pen of an Ibsen London's had comedy relief in it and a sort of easy-going romance. They attempted to have children; one child died at birth, and another pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. In , London published in Collier's magazine his eye-witness report of the San Francisco earthquake.

In , London purchased a 1, acres 4. Writing, always a commercial enterprise with London, now became even more a means to an end: I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate. Stasz writes that London "had taken fully to heart the vision, expressed in his agrarian fiction, of the land as the closest earthly version of Eden He conceived of a system of ranching that today would be praised for its ecological wisdom. It later also became known as the triode.

The grid Audion was the first device to amplify, albeit only slightly, the strength of received radio signals. However, to many observers it appeared that de Forest had done nothing more than add the grid electrode to an existing detector configuration, the Fleming valve , which also consisted of a filament and plate enclosed in an evacuated glass tube.

De Forest passionately denied the similarly of the two devices, claiming his invention was a relay that amplified currents, while the Fleming valve was merely a rectifier that converted alternating current to direct current. For this reason, de Forest objected to his Audion being referred to as "a valve".

On the other hand, Marconi admitted that the addition of the third electrode was a patentable improvement, and the two sides agreed to license each other so that both could manufacture three-electrode tubes in the United States. De Forest's European patents had lapsed because he did not have the funds needed to renew them. Because of its limited uses and the great variability in the quality of individual units, the grid Audion would be rarely used during the first half-decade after its invention. In , John V. Hogan reported that "The Audion is capable of being developed into a really efficient detector, but in its present forms is quite unreliable and entirely too complex to be properly handled by the usual wireless operator.

In May , the Radio Telephone Company and its subsidiaries were reorganized as the North American Wireless Corporation, but financial difficulties meant that the company's activities had nearly come to a halt. De Forest moved to San Francisco, California, and in early took a research job at the Federal Telegraph Company , which produced long-range radiotelegraph systems using high-powered Poulsen arcs. One of de Forest's areas of research at Federal Telegraph was improving the reception of signals, and he came up with the idea of strengthening the audio frequency output from a grid Audion by feeding it into a second tube for additional amplification.

He called this a "cascade amplifier", which eventually consisted of chaining together up to three Audions. At this time the American Telephone and Telegraph Company was researching ways to amplify telephone signals to provide better long-distance service, and it was recognized that de Forest's device had potential as a telephone line repeater. It was found that de Forest's "gassy" version of the Audion could not handle even the relatively low voltages used by telephone lines. Due to the way he constructed the tubes, de Forest's Audions would cease to operate with too high a vacuum.

However, careful research by Dr. With these changes the Audion evolved into a modern electron-discharge vacuum tube, using electron flows rather than ions. Irving Langmuir at the General Electric Corporation made similar findings, and both he and Arnold attempted to patent the "high vacuum" construction, but the U. Supreme Court ruled in that this modification could not be patented. De Forest had hoped for a higher payment, but was again in bad financial shape and was unable to bargain for more.

Radio Telephone Company officials had engaged in some of the same stock selling excesses that had taken place at American DeForest, and as part of the U. Their trials took place in late , and while three of the defendants were found guilty, de Forest was acquitted. The Radio Telephone Company began selling "Oscillion" power tubes to amateurs, suitable for radio transmissions.

The company wanted to keep a tight hold on the tube business, and originally maintained a policy that retailers had to require their customers to return a worn-out tube before they could get a replacement. This style of business encouraged others to make and sell unlicensed vacuum tubes which did not impose a return policy. Cunningham of San Francisco, whose Audio Tron tubes cost less but were of equal or higher quality.

The de Forest company sued Audio Tron Sales, eventually settling out of court. However, it also became known for the poor quality of its vacuum tubes, especially compared to those produced by major industrial manufacturers such as General Electric and Western Electric. Beginning in there was increased investigation of vacuum-tube capabilities, simultaneously by numerous inventors in multiple countries, who identified additional important uses for the device.

These overlapping discoveries led to complicated legal disputes over priority, perhaps the most bitter being one in the United States between de Forest and Edwin Howard Armstrong over the discovery of regeneration also known as the "feedback circuit" and, by de Forest, as the "ultra-audion".

Beginning in Armstrong prepared papers and gave demonstrations that comprehensively documented how to employ three-element vacuum tubes in circuits that amplified signals to stronger levels than previously thought possible, and that could also generate high-power oscillations usable for radio transmission. In late Armstrong applied for patents covering the regenerative circuit , and on October 6, U. With an eye to increasing the value of the patent portfolio that would be sold to Western Electric in , beginning in de Forest filed a series of patent applications that largely copied Armstrong's claims, in the hopes of having the priority of the competing applications upheld by an interference hearing at the patent office.

Based on a notebook entry recorded at the time, de Forest asserted that, while working on the cascade amplifier, he had stumbled on August 6, across the feedback principle, which was then used in the spring of to operate a low-powered transmitter for heterodyne reception of Federal Telegraph arc transmissions. However, there was also strong evidence that de Forest was unaware of the full significance of this discovery, as shown by his lack of follow-up and continuing misunderstanding of the physics involved. In particular, it appeared that he was unaware of the potential for further development until he became familiar with Armstrong's research.

De Forest was not alone in the interference determination — the patent office identified four competing claimants for its hearings, consisting of Armstrong, de Forest, General Electric's Langmuir, and a German, Alexander Meissner, whose application would be seized by the Office of Alien Property Custodian during World War I. The subsequent legal proceedings become divided between two groups of court cases. The first court action began in when Armstrong, with Westinghouse, which purchased his patent, sued the De Forest company in district court for infringement of patent 1,, On May 17, the court ruled that the lack of awareness and understanding on de Forest's part, in addition to the fact that he had made no immediate advances beyond his initial observation, made implausible his attempt to prevail as inventor.

However, a second series of court cases, which were the result of the patent office interference proceeding, had a different outcome.

The interference board had also sided with Armstrong, and de Forest appealed its decision to the District of Columbia district court. On May 8, , that court concluded that the evidence, beginning with the notebook entry, was sufficient to establish de Forest's priority. Now on the defensive, Armstrong's side tried to overturn the decision, but these efforts, which twice went before the U.

Supreme Court, in and , were unsuccessful. This judicial ruling meant that Lee de Forest was now legally recognized in the United States as the inventor of regeneration. However, much of the engineering community continued to consider Armstrong to be the actual developer, with de Forest viewed as someone who skillfully used the patent system to get credit for an invention to which he had barely contributed.

Following the Supreme Court decision, Armstrong attempted to return his Institute of Radio Engineers present-day Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honor, which had been awarded to him in "in recognition of his work and publications dealing with the action of the oscillating and non-oscillating audion", but the organization's board refused to let him, stating that it "strongly affirms the original award".

De Forest regularly responded to articles which he thought exaggerated Armstrong's contributions with animosity that continued even after Armstrong's suicide. Following the publication of Carl Dreher 's "E. Armstrong, the Hero as Inventor" in the August Harper's magazine, de Forest wrote the author, describing Armstrong as "exceedingly arrogant, brow beating, even brutal In the summer of , the company received an Experimental license for station 2XG , [34] located at its Highbridge laboratory.

In late , de Forest renewed the entertainment broadcasts he had suspended in , now using the superior capabilities of vacuum-tube equipment. These broadcasts were also used to advertise "the products of the DeForest Radio Co. About listeners heard The Star-Spangled Banner and other anthems, songs, and hymns.

With the entry of the United States into World War I on April 6, , all civilian radio stations were ordered to shut down, so 2XG was silenced for the duration of the war. The ban on civilian stations was lifted on October 1, , and 2XG soon renewed operation, with the Brunswick-Balke-Collender company now supplying the phonograph records. A new station, 6XC , was established as "The California Theater station", which de Forest later stated was the "first radio-telephone station devoted solely" to broadcasting to the public. Later that year a de Forest associate, Clarence "C.

In de Forest ended most of his radio research in order to concentrate on developing an optical sound-on-film process called Phonofilm. In he filed the first patent for the new system, which improved upon earlier work by Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt and the German partnership Tri-Ergon. Phonofilm recorded the electrical waveforms produced by a microphone photographically onto film, using parallel lines of variable shades of gray, an approach known as "variable density", in contrast to "variable area" systems used by processes such as RCA Photophone.

When the movie film was projected, the recorded information was converted back into sound, in synchronization with the picture. In April he announced that he would soon have a workable sound-on-film system. But none of the Hollywood movie studios expressed interest in his invention, and because at this time these studios controlled all the major theater chains, this meant de Forest was limited to showing his experimental films in independent theaters The Phonofilm Company would file for bankruptcy in September After recording stage performances such as in vaudeville , speeches, and musical acts, on April 15, de Forest premiered 18 Phonofilm short films at the independent Rivoli Theater in New York City.

However, de Forest's choice of primarily filming short vaudeville acts, instead of full-length features, limited the appeal of Phonofilm to Hollywood studios. However, de Forest had a falling out with both men. Due to de Forest's continuing misuse of Theodore Case's inventions and failure to publicly acknowledge Case's contributions, the Case Research Laboratory proceeded to build its own camera. That camera was used by Case and his colleague Earl Sponable to record President Coolidge on August 11, , which was one of the films shown by de Forest and claimed by him to be the product of "his" inventions.

Jack London

Believing that de Forest was more concerned with his own fame and recognition than he was with actually creating a workable system of sound film, and because of his continuing attempts to downplay the contributions of the Case Research Laboratory in the creation of Phonofilm, Case severed his ties with de Forest in the fall of Case successfully negotiated an agreement to use his patents with studio head William Fox , owner of Fox Film Corporation , who marketed the innovation as Fox Movietone.

Warner Brothers introduced a competing method for sound film, the Vitaphone sound-on-disc process developed by Western Electric , with the August 6, release of the John Barrymore film Don Juan. Meanwhile, theater chain owner Isadore Schlesinger purchased the UK rights to Phonofilm and released short films of British music hall performers from September to May Almost Phonofilm shorts were made, and many are preserved in the collections of the Library of Congress and the British Film Institute.

Richter published all of his early books through these companies, some under the pseudonym Robert Clearing. His production also included children's stories, initially for others, but then for a children's periodical, The Junior Magazine Book, that he wrote, edited, and published himself ? Although most of his early efforts were written for low-caliber pulp magazines, he aspired to better, more mainstream markets, such as that represented by The Saturday Evening Post, one of the most popular magazines of the time.

His early anthology, Brothers of No Kin and Other Stories , collected some of these early works; other than the title story, it was not well received. At the same time that he was writing short stories, Richter was developing his personal philosophies about the nature of human life and the mind.

In the mids he published two books on these metaphysical and pseudo-scientific notions of human energy. Richter stated that these theories were the philosophical underpinnings for all of his literary work. His thoughts on this subject culminated in the publication many years later of his philosophical novel, The Mountain on the Desert The worsening tuberculosis of his wife forced Richter to move to New Mexico in Richter sold his home and business, living off the proceeds while devoting himself full-time to his writing career.

The stock market crash wiped out his considerable investments; deeply in debt, Richter struggled to support his family. The following years were precarious, and exacerbated Richter's ever-present anxieties and insecurities, which had forced him to quit many of his early positions. As he had when seeking better employment in the early s, Richter sent out numerous letters seeking work, even writing to President Roosevelt. In his literary work, he began to move away from the formulaic pulp stories and developed fiction based authentic regional and historical material.

For his sources, he drew on his own experiences, library research, interviews with "old-timers," and the stories he heard growing up. Richter credits these sources in detail in the acknowledgements of his books. His research and recollections went into an extensive series of notebooks maintained as least as early as his first novel published The turning point in Richter's career came in the mids, first with a story sale to the Saturday Evening Post , to which he then became a frequent contributor, and then with the publication of his short story collection Early Americana and Other Stories by Alfred A.

The content of this collection reflects the shift in the nature of Richter's work. Knopf published Richter's first novel, The Sea of Grass, in the following year and remained Richter's book publisher for the rest of his life. Although Richter continued to write occasional stories and essays for the Post and other periodicals, from this time on his literary production was focused on novels.

He produced a novel on average every other year for the rest of his life. Richter always had great difficulty writing; this is the reason his novels tend to be short. At the very end of his life, he did some further work in children's literature although only one story, Over the Blue Mountain, a novelette for young adults, was completed and published All of Richter's mature literary production from circa shares certain common themes and characteristics. It does not fall into any easily discerned chronological phases. It can be subdivided by geographical and historical setting, although even these groupings do not have any separate chronological distribution.

He went back and forth between these backdrops throughout his career. They can be divided into two major areas, which correspond to Richter's places of residence: Richter's own notebooks reflect this division: The major eastern works are sometimes further divided into the Ohio trilogy novels The Awakening Land , the Pennsylvania novels, the "Indian" novels set in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and his quasi-autobiographical personal trilogy also set in Pennsylvania; the final novel unfinished at his death.

Most of his essays could also be placed in one or another of these categories. Like his fiction, they often have a strong sense of time and place, and are often on historical or nostalgic themes. After Richter's successes in the mid-thirties, his personal circumstances gradually improved, although he always lived a modest life. He received a number of awards and an honorary degree in the s in response to The Sea of Grass and his first two Ohio novels. Richter remained in Albuquerque until , when he moved back to Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, the town of his birth and early childhood.

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