Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Manuscripts
Jack London correspondence
- Description
- This collection consists of 45 letters, primarily from Jack London and his wife, Charmian London, and 15 pieces of ephemera. There are five letters from Jack London to a literary agent named, Daniel Murphy. These letters were written in 1902. There are six letters to James M. Chandler written in 1905 and 1906. Chandler was to act as quarter-master and steward during a proposed round-the-world cruise that was scheduled to last seven years with Jack London, Charmian London, an uncle, and a Japanese servant. There is also a related newspaper clipping entitled: Jamaica Plain Man To Go On 7-Year Tour With Jack London at the end of the collection. There are 16 letters to Benjamin De Cassares, an American journalist, critic, essayist, and poet. In one letter dated November 3, 1912, Charmian tells of her "great disappointment-our second disappointment, and mainly due to a poor physician in the first place" [her miscarriage]. She discusses Nietzsche's Zarathustra and what it has done for her "...at a time of mental and physical collapse. Quite pulled me together-quite played the Bible, in fact." There are three letters to Paul Eldridge, who seems to be a young fan of Jack London's. In answer to Eldridge's letters, Charmian has given a wide range of comment pertaining to Jack's health and some of his writings. There is one letter to Perriton Maxwell, where Jack states "I believe intensely in the pro-ally side of the war...As regards a few million terrible deaths, there is not so much of the terrible about such a quantity of deaths as there is about the quantity of deaths that occur in peace times in all countries in the world, and that has occurred in war times down the past" (August 28, 1916). There are 9 letters to Hunter Kimbrough, Uptrain Sinclair's brother-in-law. Charmian's writing is somewhat flirtatious, as evident in a letter dated March 15, 1928 "Theredearest Hunter!" By the time this is in your hands, I'll be in my own queer little house. I hope to embrace you there this summer, some time. DO come. I send you a kiss---falling downstairs meanwhile if you prefer!" There are also letters to a "Mr. Hage", Vida Goldstein, S.T. Hughes, Bunster Creely and one telegram from Anna Walling Strunsky to Jack London.
