The Call of The Wild - Publication History

Publication History

On his return to California, London was unable to find work and relied on odd jobs such as cutting grass. He submitted a query letter to the San Francisco Bulletin proposing a story about his Alaskan adventure, but it was rejected because as the editor told him, "Interest in Alaska has subsided in an amazing degree." A few years later London wrote a short story about a dog named Bâtard who, at the end of the story, kills his master. London sold the piece to Cosmopolitan Magazine which published it in the June 1902 issue, titled "Diablo — A Dog". London's biographer Earle Labor says that London then began work on The Call of the Wild to "redeem the species" from the dark characterization of dogs in "Bâtard". Expecting to write a short story, London explains: "I meant it to be a companion to my other dog story "Bâtard" ... but it got away from me, and instead of 4,000 words it ran 32,000 before I could call a halt."

Written as a frontier story about the gold rush, the The Call of the Wild was meant for the pulp market and first published in four installments in The Saturday Evening Post, who bought it for $750 in 1903. In the same year, London sold all the rights to the story for $2000 to Macmillan who published it in book format. The first edition was released in August, 1903 and had 10 tipped in plates of colored pictures by illustrators Philip R. Goodwin and Charles Livingston Bull and a colored frontispiece by Charles Edward Hooper; it sold for $1.50. The book has not been out of print since that time.