Martin Eden

Martin Eden is a novel written by American author, journalist, and social activist John Griffith "Jack" London, published in 1909 about the young proletarian self-educated man trying to become a writer. 


Eden represents London’s frustration with publishers. The central theme of Eden’s developing as writer makes the novel part of the tradition of the Künstlerroman genre in which author describes his formation and development. The main character is similar to the author in many things, but different in rejecting socialism labeling it as slave morality, and adores individualism of Nietzsche. London wrote once: “One of my motifs, in this book, was an attack on individualism (in the person of the hero). I must have bungled, for not a single reviewer has discovered it.”