Jack London, one of the most successful American writers, known for his powerful stories drawn mainly from his own experiences. He spent his childhood in poverty and ventured to sea on a sealing ship at the age of seventeen. His experience in the Klondike during the gold rush period inspired London to write The Call of the Wild and White Fang. Both are now considered among his best work. He was a pioneer in the world of commercial fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone.