Jack London (1876 - 1916), lived a life rather like one of his adventure stories. He was born John Chaney, the son of a travelling Irish-American fortune-teller and Flora Wellman, the outcast of a rich family. By the time Jack was a year old, Flora had married a grocer called John London and settled into a life of poverty in Pennsylvania. As Jack grew up he managed to escape from his grim surroundings into books borrowed from the local library - his reading was guided by the librarian.

At fifteen Jack left home and travelled around North America as a tramp - he was once sent to prison for thirty days on a charge of vagrancy. At nineteen he could drink and curse as well as any boatman in California! He never lost his love of reading and even returned to education and gained entry into the University of California. He soon moved on and in 1896 joined the gold rush to the Klondyke in north-west Canada. He returned without gold but with a story in his head that became a huge best-seller - The Call of the Wild - and by 1913 he was the highest -paid and most widely read writer in the world. He spent all his money on his friends, on drink and on building himself a castle-like house which was destroyed by fire before it was finished. Financial difficulties led to more pressure than he could cope with and in 1916, at the age of forty, Jack London committed suicide.

Titles such as The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf and White Fang continue to excite readers today.

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet. As a young child she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and encouraged to take frequent nature walks. Today she is best known for her nature writing and regional works set along the coast of Maine. At nineteen, Jewett had a short story published in The Atlantic.

She is the author of Deephaven (1877), Old Friends and New (1879), Country By-Ways (1881), A White Heron and Other Stories (1886), and A Native of Winby and Other Tales (1893). Her novels include A Country Doctor (1884) and The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896). For most of her adult life, Jewett lived with Annie Adams Field in what was then termed a 'Boston marriage'.