Martin Eden

Martin Eden is a young, hard working man of the working class. After a chance encounter with a beautiful woman of the bourgeoisie, he finds himself in love. In order to win this woman's approval he decides to educate himself: He corrects his speech, he learns proper manners, and he reads the classics of literature, philosophy, and science.Eventually they become engaged, and he decides to become a writer. But he's continually flummoxed by the greedy and unintelligent editors who are incapable of understanding his work, and by a society that values money as the pinnacle of success.In Martin Eden, Jack London weaves in several details from his own life and experience as an early writer. However, unlike the titular character, a self-described "e;individualist"e; and "e;Nietzsche-man,"e; London was in reality a vocal socialist, and had intended Martin Eden to be an unflattering caricature of a man who seeks only self-improvement instead of class-improvement. Ironically this was unremarked upon in contemporary reviews. As he inscribed in a copy of the novel given to Upton Sinclair, "e;One of my motifs, in this book, was an attack on individualism. I must have bungled it, for not a single reviewer has discovered it."e;Perfect for readers who love powerful stories of self-transformation and the pursuit of the American Dream, this Jack London masterpiece captures the raw ambition and heartbreak of a man determined to rise above his circumstances. With its unflinching portrayal of class divisions and the cost of chasing love and literary success, Martin Eden remains as relevant and gripping today as when it was first published.The source for this public-domain ebook is Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Ebooks from other sources often have typos, inconsistent spelling, missing accent marks, and missing punctuation. Ebooks from Standard Ebooks are proofread line by line against a scan of the original printed pages, then proofread again from cover to cover. They are also formatted and typeset following a professional-grade style manual, resulting in new editions supporting state-of-the-art ereader technology: automatic hyphenation, popup footnotes, complete and consistent metadata, high-resolution and scalable vector graphics, and ereader-compatible tables of contents. All of this makes the finished ebooks accurate, functional, and beautiful, a pleasure to read. (Waking Lion Press is not affiliated with or endorsed by Standard Ebooks.)