Martin Eden

Martin Eden is a (1909) novel by American author Jack London about a young proletarian autodidact struggling to become a writer. It was first serialized in the Pacific Monthly magazine from September 1908 to September 1909 and published in book form by Macmillan in September 1909. Eden represents writers' frustration with publishers by speculating that when he mails off a manuscript, a "cunning arrangement of cogs" immediately puts it in a new envelope and returns it automatically with a rejection slip. The central theme of Eden's developing artistic sensibilities places the novel in the tradition of the Künstlerroman, in which is narrated the formation and development of an artist. Living in Oakland at the beginning of the 20th century, Martin Eden struggles to rise. His principal motivation is his love for Ruth Morse. Because Eden is a rough, uneducated sailor from a working-class background and the Morses a bourgeois family, a union between them would be impossible until...