Short answers, pulled from the story.
Jack London was born on the 12th of January, 1876, near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco. The house burned down in the fire following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the California Historical Society placed a plaque at the site in 1953.
Jack London's most famous works include the novels The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea-Wolf, The Iron Heel, and Martin Eden, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire," "An Odyssey of the North," and "Love of Life." The Call of the Wild, sold to The Saturday Evening Post for $750 in early 1903, is frequently called his masterpiece.
Jack London was a committed socialist who joined the Socialist Labor Party in April 1896, later switching to the Socialist Party of America in 1901. He ran twice as the Socialist candidate for mayor of Oakland, receiving 245 votes in 1901 and 981 in 1905, and closed his personal letters with the phrase "Yours for the Revolution." He resigned from the Glen Ellen chapter of the Socialist Party in 1916.
Jack London died on the 22nd of November, 1916, on a sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch in Glen Ellen, California. His death certificate lists the cause as uremia following acute renal colic. Most biographers, including Russ Kingman, conclude he died of uremia aggravated by an accidental morphine overdose.
Jack London purchased a thousand-acre ranch in Glen Ellen, Sonoma County, California, in 1905, on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain. He spent $80,000 to build a fifteen-thousand-square-foot stone mansion called Wolf House on the property, but it burned to the ground two weeks before he and his wife Charmian planned to move in. The ranch is now a National Historic Landmark within Jack London State Historic Park.
Virginia Prentiss, also known as Jennie, was a neighbor and former slave who served as London's wet nurse after his birth. London later referred to her as his primary source of love and affection as a child. The Prentiss family moved with the London family when they settled in Oakland, and London borrowed money from her to buy the oyster-pirating sloop Razzle-Dazzle in 1889.