Friends of Montclair Library

Jack London reading to his daughter Joan

Today, January 12th, is author Jack London’s birthday. Born in San Francisco in 1876, London soon moved to Oakland, where he attended elementary and high school and discovered the magic of the Oakland Public Library and librarian (and future first poet laureate of California) Ina Coolbrith, who encouraged his reading and writing.

“And then I came to the city of Oakland, and on the shelves of that Free Library I discovered all the great world beyond the skyline,” London wrote in his autobiographical novel, John Barleycorn.

The Montclair Library has a range of books by and about Jack London, including classics like White Fang and The Call of the Wild, travel stories like The Cruise of the Snark and even an early post-apocalyptic science fiction piece set largely in Berkeley, about a worldwide epidemic illness that strikes in the summer of 2013, “The Scarlet Plague.”

To learn more about Jack London outside of books, visit Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen, including the haunting ruins of Wolf House, which will be familiar to readers of Rick Riordan’s The Lost Hero.