South Sea Tales [Hardcover]

Jack London (Author), 1stWorld Library (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2007

Despite the heavy clumsiness of her lines, the Aorai handled easily in the light breeze, and her captain ran her well in before he hove to just outside the suck of the surf. The atoll of Hikueru lay low on the water, a circle of pounded coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty miles in circumference, and from three to five feet above high-water mark. On the bottom of the huge and glassy lagoon was much pearl shell, and from the deck of the schooner, across the slender ring of the atoll, the divers could be seen at work. But the lagoon had no entrance for even a trading schooner. With a favoring breeze cutters could win in through the tortuous and shallow channel, but the schooners lay off and on outside and sent in their small boats.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“He was an adventurer and a man of action as few writers have ever been . . . the excellence of his short stories has been almost forgotten.”—George Orwell


From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

From the Publisher

This edition is printed in specially-designed large type for easier reading, and is printed on non-glare paper. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 172 pages
• Publisher: 1st World Library - Literary Society (March 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 142183264X
• ISBN-13: 978-1421832647
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #586,705 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This is not South Sea Tales, December 30, 2003

By 

TopCat "hal96a" (Minneapolis) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: South Sea Tales (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)

This review is of South Sea Tales (Modern Library Classics) by Jack London (Paperback - April 9, 2002). A commenter notes that the review may have been applied to other editions and formats in the Amazon automation maze that actually contain the original collection of stories.

One star is not because the Jack London stories in this book are not wonderful. It is because this book is not South Sea Tales by Jack London, which I first got from my grandfather's bookshelf and was one of the most memorable reads from my youth. It is a collection of sea stories, including four from South Sea Tales, but I have found a copy of the original stories at Barnes and Noble. One might guess that some of the stories were dropped because, like Huck Finn, they use dialogue and espouse attitudes that we now know better than to live. The stories are still great and do not deserve to become un-stories. This collection is misnamed and misleading.
This edit is a clarification. The replacement stories are wonderful. I believe they come mostly from The Voyage of the Snark. But the Snark stories are much more documentary style fiction and may? have been written to finance that ill-fated cruise. The original stories in South Sea Tales are literary and have the period qualities found in Joseph Conrad's novelettes. You won't be sorry you read them, but the replacements are not the quality of the original stories in the collection.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good solid 1900's sea stories, October 17, 2000

By 

David M. Chess (Mohegan Lake, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: South Sea Tales (Mass Market Paperback)

Eight good stories by Jack London, about the people and places of the south Pacific in 1908. Also a good long introduction by A. Grove Day which should (like all too many "introductions") only be read *after* reading the stories.

Most of the people in these stories are, of course, either victims or perpetrators (or both) of one of those long painful Western exploitations of a less civilized ("less civilized") part of the world. London knows that that's what's going on, and he writes with sympathy for all concerned, and without the more self-conscious bemoaning that would be expected of a XXIst century writer. To the modern reader, then, he can sometimes seem cold-blooded, but seldom disturbingly so.

The prose is fine and spare most of the time, and never gets in the way of the tale. The places and the tales are memorable. There is not a great variety of character and setting; the eight stories together could almost be a single novel. His voyage on the Snark (which inspired these stories) clearly left him with a strong and single impression of this place and these people, and he conveys that impression skillfully along to us.

Definitely worth reading.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific Collection, November 28, 2005

By 

Auriga Distribution2 (Front Royal VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: South Sea Tales (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)

London does not disappoint in this collection. His observations are as sound today as they were in his time. It was fascinating to see that London even experimented with science fiction in his story the Red One.

Sean O'Reilly

Editor-at-large

Travelers' Tales

Editor of 30 Days in the South Pacific