Martin Eden

Martin Eden is a novel by the American writer Jack London, published in 1909. It was serialised in The Pacific Monthly from September 1908 to September 1909 before appearing in book form.

Eden is an autodidact from a poor background who sets out to rise above his circumstances through an intense programme of self-education, driven by his ambition to write and by his love for a woman from a class above his own.

The novel is a portrait of what that costs him. It is also a book about writers and publishers: the manuscript that goes out and comes back with a rejection slip attached was a piece of the author's own experience, and it is one of the things the novel is remembered for. It is as much a document of what writing for a living was like in that period as it is a story about one man.

London wrote afterwards that one of his intentions had been an attack on individualism in the person of his hero, and that he had made a poor job of it, since no reviewer of the book had noticed.