Martin Eden

Martin Eden
	First edition
Author	Jack London
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Künstlerroman
Publisher	Macmillan
Publication date	1909
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	393

Martin Eden is a 1909 novel by American author Jack London about a young proletarian autodidact struggling to become a writer. It was first serialized in The Pacific Monthly magazine from September 1908 to September 1909 and then published in book form by Macmillan in September 1909.

Eden represents writers' frustration with publishers. The central theme of Eden's developing artistic sensibilities places the novel in the tradition of the Künstlerroman, which narrates an artist's formation and development.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Eden differs from London in rejecting socialism, attacking it as "slave morality" and relying on Nietzschean individualism. Nevertheless, in the copy of the novel which he inscribed for Upton Sinclair, London wrote, "One of my motifs, in this book, was an attack on individualism (in the person of the hero). I must have bungled it, for not a single reviewer has discovered it."^[4]

^ Baskett, Sam S. (Spring 1976). "Martin Eden: Jack London's Poem of the Mind". Modern Fiction Studies. 22 (1): 23–36. JSTOR 26280173?seq=1.
^ Angell, James Burrill (2006) Martin Eden and the Education of Henry Adams: The Advent of Existentialism in American Literature, p. 69.
^ Earle Labor, Jeanne Campbell Reesman (1994) Jack London p.76 quotation: "Martin Eden is part of a literary tradition that includes such classics as Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Melville's Pierre, Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, DH Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, and Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel.
^ Bridgwater, Patrick (1972). Nietzsche in Anglosaxony. A study of Nietzsche's impact on English and American literature. Leicester University Press. p. 169. ISBN 9780718511043.

[1] Baskett, Sam S. (Spring 1976). "Martin Eden: Jack London's Poem of the Mind". Modern Fiction Studies. 22 (1): 23–36. JSTOR 26280173?seq=1.

[2] Angell, James Burrill (2006) Martin Eden and the Education of Henry Adams: The Advent of Existentialism in American Literature, p. 69.

[3] Earle Labor, Jeanne Campbell Reesman (1994) Jack London p.76 quotation: "Martin Eden is part of a literary tradition that includes such classics as Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Melville's Pierre, Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, DH Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, and Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel.

[4] Bridgwater, Patrick (1972). Nietzsche in Anglosaxony. A study of Nietzsche's impact on English and American literature. Leicester University Press. p. 169. ISBN 9780718511043.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]