“He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time,” wrote Jack London in his 1903 classic novel The Call of the Wild. The story centers on a dog named Buck who is sold off and shipped to the Klondike to be trained as a sled dog. The harsh conditions and treatment ignite his primitive, wolflike ways — and he becomes the story’s mythical hero. London’s 1906 novel White Fang finds a wolfdog on the journey to domesticity. The author’s experiences as a “hobo,” sailor, and journalist took him to faraway places — many which become the settings for his stories. “It was in the Klondike I found myself,” he wrote while reflecting on his days in the Yukon Territory. London always had a penchant for dogs and animals, and his cold-weather travels found him surrounded by them. The wolves and dogs of London’s stories made their way to the covers of his books, which we’ve collected in memory of the author.
