Physical description

Hard cover book. When God Laughs
Author: Jack London
Publisher: Reprint Publisher Unclear Possibly Heinemann
Date: 1912-1940s
Further Information: A plain dark green cloth binding with the title and author stamped in flat white/silver block lettering "WHEN GOD / LAUGHS" over "JACK LONDON." There's no gilt decoration, no illustrated boards, and no dust jacket.

Publication type

fiction

Inscriptions & markings

The label on the spine with typed text PAT FIC LON
Paste down front end paper has a sticker from Corangamite Regional Library Service
Front loose end paper has a stamp from Corangamite Regional Library Service
Front loose end paper has a stamp from Warrnambool Public Library

Summary

When God Laughs, and Other Stories is Jack London's eleventh collection of short fiction, originally published in 1911 (by Mills & Boon in the UK) when London was about thirty-five and roughly at the midpoint of his career. It gathers twelve stories he had mostly written as quick, paying magazine work, and the quality is famously uneven hack pieces sit alongside some of his finest short fiction. Jack London lived beyond his income for much of his writing career, and to pay his bills he often produced 'immediately remunerative short fiction for the magazines'. In 1911 he pulled twelve of these into one volume. The collection takes its name from the opening story, about a couple who try in vain to sustain an intensely idealistic romance against the erosion of time and human inconstancy, and the book as a whole explores themes London was known for: survival in hostile environments, humanity's rawest instincts, and worker exploitation under industrial capitalism. Unlike much of London's earlier Klondike centred work, this collection is set largely in Polynesia and the South Seas, reflecting his voyages aboard the Snark in the years just before.