In this selection from the Spencer Library of Literary Classics we present one of Jack London’s finest works. The year 1897 was an important one in the life of the twenty one year-old London who’d spent his youth in the seedy environment of San Francisco’s waterfront district.

It was in 1897 that he left California to find gold in the Klondike Rush. And find gold he did…not in the ground but in the experience of searching for it. His observations, trials and tribulations would become the basis for his most successful writings as he developed a keen appreciation and deep respect for the forces of nature. Born of this respect, London’s simple story of one man’s journey
across the wilderness becomes a bone-chilling account of survival at its most basic. It becomes painfully easy to imagine what it would be like to have your life depend solely on your ability To Build a Fire.