About the Author

After writing her Ph.D. dissertation titled, “The Call of Kind: Race in Jack London’s Fiction,” at UMASS Amherst in 1990, Susan M. Nuernberg expanded her reputation as a Jack London scholar.

Not only did she publish books and articles on life and works of Jack London, she made a pilgrimage to Dawson City for the Klondike Gold Rush centennial celebration where she gave a keynote address.

She took a yearlong sabbatical as the Jack London Scholar in Residence at Sonoma State University Library when it opened with a new Jack London collection and reading room donated by Waring Jones.    

She taught English as a professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh for 21 years. When she retired in 2011, she moved to Santa Rosa, California.

She lived just ten miles down highway 12 from Jack London’s 1,400-acre ranch, now the Jack London State Historic Park, where she volunteered to share her knowledge as a docent.

She knew the established Jack London “story” and its controversies inside and out, but soon realized she knew little about his private life or his second wife Charmian Kittredge London.

Incredibly, the perspective of Charmian Kittredge London, the one person who knew him better than anyone else, had been left out. Why? Who was she?

Susan wanted to know so she re-read Clarice Stasz’s books,  American Dreamers and Jack London’s Women, and Charmian’s own books, The Book of Jack London, Log of the Snark, and Our Hawaii.

Her explorations led her to the Charmian Kittredge London collections at the Huntington Library and at Utah State University Library where she found a world of materials including letters, manuscripts, photographs, and her handwritten daily diaries to which access had only recently been permitted.

Susan decided to transcribe and annotate Charmian’s diaries 1904-1916. This website  is devoted to the project of making Charmian’s perspective on her life and times with Jack London available in her own words to other inquiring minds.