Lost Face

Published in 1910, when Jack London was the most popular and highest-paid writer in America, Lost Face gathers seven tales of the Yukon and the Alaskan far North — the country London knew from his own Klondike Gold Rush winter and wrote better than anyone.

At its centre stands “To Build a Fire,” here in the definitive 1908 version: a nameless man and his dog set out through fifty-below cold toward a death the man cannot imagine until it is on him. It is the most widely read short story in American literature, a merciless parable of human hubris against an indifferent nature. The title tale, “Lost Face,” is one of London’s most ferocious — a doomed fur thief who tricks his Native captors out of slow torture and into a swift death by their own hand.

Around these stand five more — “Trust,” “That Spot,” “Flush of Gold,” “The Passing of Marcus O’Brien,” and “The Wit of Porportuk” — ranging from black comedy to pure tragedy, all written in the lean, muscular naturalism that became London’s signature, and all governed by his vision of a nature that is not cruel but simply does not care.

This edition presents the complete public-domain text in clean, readable typesetting prepared for the modern e-reader, with an editor’s foreword on the book and its famous central story, a biographical note on Jack London, a guide to further reading, and questions for reflection.