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LONDON, JACK. 1876-1916. Autograph Manuscript Signed ("Jack London"), entitled "A Curious Fragment," 39 pp, 4to, Oakland, California, April 16, 1907,
11 April 2016, 10:00 EDT
New YorkUS$25,000 - US$35,000
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LONDON, JACK. 1876-1916.
Autograph Manuscript Signed ("Jack London"), entitled "A Curious Fragment," 39 pp, 4to, Oakland, California, April 16, 1907, in ink with some revisions in pencil, on paper watermarked "Real Irish Linen." Bound in elaborately gilt-tooled full fawn morocco, t.e.g. Spine partially cracked and chipped at bottom, front free endpaper and first leaf of the manuscript loose in binding.
Provenance: L. H. Kauffman (bookplate); Willard S. Morse Collection (Christie's New York, May 20, 1988).
A fascinating Science Fiction short story from the pen of the great story-teller Jack London, one of only five manuscript short stories by London to have appeared at auction in the last 40 years. Originally published in Town Topics (December 10, 1908, pp 45-47) for which London received $100; he reprinted it in When God Laughs and Other Stories" (New York: Macmillan, 1911, pp 257-75). "A Curious Fragment," like London's The Iron Heel (1907), warned of a dystopian future of class warfare brought on by the vices of capitalism. Set in the 26th century ("the fifth century of the terrible industrial oligarchy that was reared upon the ruins of the early Republic"), it tells of a world run by ruthless oligarchs and where workers (London calls them "slaves") are legally forbidden to read and write as in antebellum days. John Tourney recounts how a "slave who could write" delivered a petition of grievances from his fellow workers to their boss with a severed arm that was recently cut off in a factory accident in Hell's Bottom. Tourney concludes: "And my message is, brothers, that there is a good time coming, when all will be well in the world and there will be neither masters nor slaves. But first you must prepare for that good time by learning to read. There is power in the printed word. And here am I to teach you to read, and as well there are others to see that you get the books when I am gone along upon my way -- the history books wherein you will learn about your masters, and learn to become strong even as they." The introductory note reveals that on January 25, 2734, Tourney "was sentenced to five years' penal servitude in the borax mines of the Arizona Desert" for telling his story to other laborers. "'A Curious Fragment,' like Looking Backward, makes fundamentally Marxist assumptions about the growth of economic conflict and the inevitability of social change, but the change that the proletarian Jack London sees is quite different from that imagined by Bellamy. This short tale is important as a critique of nineteenth-century scientific optimism and yet, at the same time, it is fundamentally more optimistic than the dour twentieth-century dystopias like Brave New World (1932)" (Rabkin, Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology, 1983, p 208). Revisions were few and relatively minor; for example, the villain's mother was named "Lizzie Connelly" in the manuscript but "Laura Carnly" in the published version. London did not so much edit his text as blot out the earlier word or phrase.
Provenance: L. H. Kauffman (bookplate); Willard S. Morse Collection (Christie's New York, May 20, 1988).
A fascinating Science Fiction short story from the pen of the great story-teller Jack London, one of only five manuscript short stories by London to have appeared at auction in the last 40 years. Originally published in Town Topics (December 10, 1908, pp 45-47) for which London received $100; he reprinted it in When God Laughs and Other Stories" (New York: Macmillan, 1911, pp 257-75). "A Curious Fragment," like London's The Iron Heel (1907), warned of a dystopian future of class warfare brought on by the vices of capitalism. Set in the 26th century ("the fifth century of the terrible industrial oligarchy that was reared upon the ruins of the early Republic"), it tells of a world run by ruthless oligarchs and where workers (London calls them "slaves") are legally forbidden to read and write as in antebellum days. John Tourney recounts how a "slave who could write" delivered a petition of grievances from his fellow workers to their boss with a severed arm that was recently cut off in a factory accident in Hell's Bottom. Tourney concludes: "And my message is, brothers, that there is a good time coming, when all will be well in the world and there will be neither masters nor slaves. But first you must prepare for that good time by learning to read. There is power in the printed word. And here am I to teach you to read, and as well there are others to see that you get the books when I am gone along upon my way -- the history books wherein you will learn about your masters, and learn to become strong even as they." The introductory note reveals that on January 25, 2734, Tourney "was sentenced to five years' penal servitude in the borax mines of the Arizona Desert" for telling his story to other laborers. "'A Curious Fragment,' like Looking Backward, makes fundamentally Marxist assumptions about the growth of economic conflict and the inevitability of social change, but the change that the proletarian Jack London sees is quite different from that imagined by Bellamy. This short tale is important as a critique of nineteenth-century scientific optimism and yet, at the same time, it is fundamentally more optimistic than the dour twentieth-century dystopias like Brave New World (1932)" (Rabkin, Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology, 1983, p 208). Revisions were few and relatively minor; for example, the villain's mother was named "Lizzie Connelly" in the manuscript but "Laura Carnly" in the published version. London did not so much edit his text as blot out the earlier word or phrase.