Jack London, also known as John Griffith Chaney, was born in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. By the time he was thirty years old, he had already acquired international fame for his novels The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf, and White Fang. Throughout the course of his career, London wrote more than fifty novels, short stories, plays, and political essays. He was among the first writers to work with the movie industry, and The Sea-Wolf was the basis for the first full-length American movie. London died in 1916.