Book Description

The Sea-Wolf: Illustrated by Jack London; Illustrated by W. J. Aylward, was published in 1904. Powerful and gripping saga of Humphrey Van Weyden, captured by a seal-hunting ship and now an unwilling sailor under its dreaded captain, Wolf Larsen. The men who sailed with Larsen were treacherous outcasts, but the captain himself was the legendary Sea Wolf-a violent brute of a man. An immediate bestseller, the first printing of forty thousand copies was sold out before publication. Of it, Ambrose Bierce wrote "The great thing-and it is among the greatest of things-is that tremendous creation, Wolf Larsen... the hewing out and setting up of such a figure is enough for a man to do in one lifetime." "This story surely has the pure Stevenson ring, the adventurous glamour, the vertebrate stoicism. 'Tis surely the story of the making of a man, the sculptor being Captain Larsen, and the clay, the ease-loving, well-to-do, half-drowned man, to all appearances his helpless prey." Critic.