The Kempton Wace Letters

Published in 1903 by MacMillan, The Kempton Wace Letters is an epistolary novel built exclusively around an exchange of letters between Herbert Wace, a young scientist and Dane Kempton, an elderly poet. The two discuss the scientific and poetic aspects of love and sex, analysing the notion through Darwinian approaches on the one side and what might be termed poetic sentiment on the other. The book was initially published anonymously though subsequently it was revealed that the two sets of letters were written by Jack London, as Wace and scientist, and Anna Strunsky as Kempton the poet. Moderately successful in its initial form, its popularity fell away subsequently and the prose, particularly London's has been criticised for being a shallow exposition of the science as it was understood then.