Jack London was an American author who wrote The Call of the Wild and other books. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first Americans to make a huge financial success from writing.
Jack London, probably born John Griffith Chaney, was deserted by his father, William Henry Chaney. He was raised in Oakland by his mother Flora Wellman, a music teacher and spiritualist, and stepfather John London, whose surname he took.
Biographer Clarice Stasz and others believe that Jack London's father was astrologer William Chaney. Whether Wellman and Chaney were legally married is unknown. Most San Francisco civil records were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake (for the same reason, it is not known with certainty what name appeared on his birth certificate). Stasz notes that in his memoirs Chaney refers to Jack London's mother Flora Wellman, as having been his "wife"and also cites an advertisement in which Flora calls herself "Florence Wellman Chaney".