Beschreibung:

LONDON, JACK. Autograph manuscript notes for his novel Adventure , [Aboard the Snark ,] around the Solomon Islands, ca . August-October 1908]. 42 pages, 8vo, written in pencil on the rectos of 42 lined sheets of heavy pulp content, removed from a notebook pad leaving some upper edges a little jagged, the first leaf torn at upper right corner with some word loss, another leaf with chip at upper margin and professionally strenghtened on verso, with an additional blank leaf; with a manila envelope, 8vo, separated and defective, the address panel (with printed return address of London's publisher The Macmillan Company), professionally backed , inscribed by the author's wife Charmian in pencil: "...Jack's Handwritten Notes (written somewhere onboard Snark in 1909 [ sic ]) -- for his novel Adventure , published later on. Do you care to have these?" These working notes, with revisions, for the novel (first published in London, early 1911, by Thomas Nelson) were probably written in September or early October 1908. In a letter dated 25 October 1908 from Penduffryn, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands -- the setting of the novel -- London wrote to George Brett, president of Macmillan: "Just dropping you a line from the Solomon Islands. I have just returned here from a voyage on the Snark up to Lord Howe and Tasman Islands. We were gone over two months on the trip, during which the Snark was a hospital ship. There was never a time when some of us were not sick...I have now 20,000 words written on a short Solomon Island novel -- love-story and adventure [ Adventure ]. I am working on this novel now, and should have it finished in the next two months" ( Letters , ed. K. Henricks and I. Shepard, pp. 260-261). The Londons (and their crew) had set forth from Oakland on the Snark in April 1907 to sail around the world; their stay in the Solomons, however, marked the virtual end of the cruise. London and his wife went to Sydney in an attempt to regain their health -- planning to return to Penduffryn for resumption of the Snark voyage. But doctors in Sydney advised London to give up the cruise for health reasons and to return home to California. It was on a steamer from Australia to Ecuador, on his way back to America, that London finished Adventure in April 1909. London's physical agony (from his affliction with tropical diseases) and his sense of failure (at the dismal end to his dream of sailing around the world in seven years) is reflected in Adventure . His physical condition forced him to admit to himself that he was not the super hero of his novels. Adventure , a romance between an English plantation owner (at Penduffryn) and an adventurous American girl (raised in Hawaii), contains dark underlying themes of hatred, disease, and sadism, that reflect London's physical and emotional pain at the time (see Andrew Sinclair, Jack: A Biography of Jack London , New York, 1977, pp. 152-153). London's notes for Adventure . [pages 12-13]: "Maybe title: 'The True Romance.' Which is, of course, love...they had been pursuing adventures as the true romance -- & had talked it to each other from the start. Romance had brought him to the Solomons. She had been filled with romance...but had not dreamed that she would ever live it herself..." [pages 17-21]: "Introduce a villian [ sic ] -- who appears, & who fights duel with hero -- mile apart and advance on each other. Can't settle it by ordinary duel. Hero says would be willing to flip coins, loser to commit suicide, only he can't trust villain. Villain uses dynamite -- any weapon being permissible. Hero also discovers that villain has been notching & splitting noses of steel jacketed bullets -- to make dum-dum [bullets]...Villain wants the girl, too. Villain an educated man, too. Make him a character. He is the sole survivor of a gold expedition. They rescue him up the river...He, of course, stops with them. Is puzzled by the situation. Makes himself subtly odious." [page 22]: "Her attitude is romance of adven