Beschreibung:

LONDON, Jack (1876–1916). The Call of the Wild. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905. 8vo. Half title, 18 plates (11 full–page color printed plates including frontispiece and 7 full–page woodcuts) by Philip P. Goodwin and Charles Livingston Bull with numerous decorations by Charles Edward Hooper. Original decorated green cloth stamped in red, white and black with gilt–lettering on upper over and spine, top edge gilt, decorated endpapers; morocco–backed folding box. Early edition, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY LONDON PRESUMABLY TO THE ANARCHIST POLITICAL ACTIVIST EMMA GOLDMAN (1869–1940): “Dear Emma– never mind the new San Francisco; here’s to the new library. Affectionately yours, Jack London. Glen Ellen, Calif. June 15, 1906”. London appears to be referring to the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that destroyed most of the city, including the Cecil H. Green Library at Stanford University. London had a strong connection with the University, giving lectures on literature, socialism, and is even where he met Anna Strunsky (another acquaintance of Emma Goldman); a graduate student who London was involved with romantically and intellectually, and would remain lifelong friends and colleagues. Emma Goldman was an international anarchist who conducted leftist activities in the United States from about 1890 to 1917. She advocated for free speech, free love, birth control, women’s equality, and the right of labor to organize. She fought against anti-syndicalism laws, the military draft, and American intervention in the Russian Revolution. In her activist magazine, Mother Earth, she would speak out against the atrocities happening during the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake: “What is going to be the end of the great display of superficial sentimentality for the stricken city? An all-around good deal: Moneyed people, contractors, real estate speculators will make large sums of money. Indeed it is not at all unlikely that within a few months good Christian capitalists will secretly thank their Lord that he sent the earthquake” (Mother Earth, May 1906). The inscription from London to Goldman was probably a playful attempt to avoid her views on the event. There have only been two inscriptions by Jack London to an “Emma” that have come up for sale and it is their content, along with the uniqueness of this copy that has led us to conclude that these are to Emma Goldman. The first inscription was in London’s The Road that read: “Dear Emma, When the ‘Great Divide’ of socialism comes, you may need all the information to be found written in these covers” and the other bears the inscription with a quote by the author from London’s The Son of the Wolf: “Dear Emma, ‘Man rarely places a proper valuation upon his womankind, at least not until deprived of them’”. (See Bonham’s sale 2014). The first inscription touches on London’s well documented socialist ideas of which London would often debate with Goldman and her anarchist views. The second inscription is a feminist–type quote from the author. It is well documented that Emma Goldman advocated passionately for the rights of women and is today heralded as a founder of anarcha–feminism, which challenges patriarchy as a hierarchy. In her autobiography, she recounts her time spent with Jack London and her high praise of the author: “In San Francisco I learned that Jack London lived in the neighborhood. I had met him with other young socialist students at the Strunskys’ on my first visit to California, in 1897. I had since read most of his works and I was naturally eager to renew our acquaintance…” Goldman goes on to say that she wanted to interest London in the project that the Ferrer Association was planning in establishing the Modern School in New York and requested that he attend her lecture on Francisco Ferrer. “His reply was charismatic: ‘Dear Emma Goldman,’ it read, ‘I have your note. I would not go to a meeting even if God Almighty were to speak there. The only time I att