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The Scarlet Plague is a novel by Jack London that holds a very special place in the author’s oeuvre. The post-apocalyptic novel features a world in which all the knowledge and sophistication of our society is lost and Earth is populated by savage and barbarian humans.The story of the Scarlet Plague takes place in the year 2073, six decades after most humans were killed by the red plague epidemic. The protagonist of the story is James Howard Smith, an elderly man who survived the plague and is one of the few on the entire planet who still has memories of what life on pre-plague Earth was like. As he realizes that he does not have too much time left before he dies, he tries to share his memories with his four grandsons, telling them about thousands of years of human civilization, a world that had music, various forms of art, books and joy. Unfortunately, the young generations do not understand the wisdom of the stories they hear from Smith – they are hunter-gatherers who will probably create a civilization and a world that is completely different from the world as their ancestors used to know it.The story was first published in 1912 in London Magazine. The short piece of writing raised interest and generated a lot of buzz when it first came out and it continues to be considered one of London’s most complex stories. Besides being a thought-provoking story, The Scarlet Plague is also a very enjoyable reading – the language is rich, the narration is intriguing and even though there is hardly any action going on in the present tense of the story, readers will surely find themselves pinned to their chairs while reading and then they will keep contemplating for a long time about what they have just read.

The story takes place in 2073, sixty years after an uncontrollable epidemic, the Red Death, has depopulated the planet. James Smith is one of the survivors of the era before the scarlet plague hit and is still left alive in the San Francisco area, and he travels with his grandsons Edwin, Hoo-Hoo, and Hare-Lip. His grandsons are young and live as primeval hunter-gatherers in a heavily depopulated world. Their intellect is limited, as are their language abilities. Edwin asks Smith, whom they call "Granser", to tell them of the disease alternately referred to as scarlet plague, scarlet death, or red death.

This post-apocalyptic fiction novel takes place in 2072, sixty years after an uncontrollable epidemic, the Red Death, has depopulated the planet. James Howard Smith is one of the few survivors of the pre-plague era left alive in the San Francisco area, and as he realizes his time grows short, he tries to impart the value of knowledge and wisdom to his grandsons.

The Scarlet Plague by Jack London, 1912. Jack London (1876 - 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. As a pioneer in the world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. He is best remembered as the author of White Fang and Call of the Wild, set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and The Sea Wolf, of the San Francisco Bay area. London was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers.

* Beautifully illustrated with delightful illustrations from early editions, The Scarlet Plague is a post-apocalyptic fiction takes place in 2073, sixty years after an uncontrollable epidemic has depopulated the planet. James Howard Smith is one of the few survivors of the pre-plague era left alive in the San Francisco area, and, as he realizes his is running out, he tries to impart the value of knowledge and wisdom to his grandsons. But his efforts are in vain, for they live the primeval life of hunters-gatherers and ridicule his recollections of the past, which sound totally unbelievable to them.* Just as accessible and enjoyable for today's readers as it would have been when first published, the novel is one of the great works of American literature and continues to be widely read throughout the world.* This meticulous edition from Heritage Illustrated Publishing is a faithful reproduction of the original text and is enhanced with images carefully selected by our team of professional editors.

Jack London (1878-1918) was an American author who earned renown across the globe for his fictional work, at a time when commercial magazine fiction was a market on the rise. Although he is known for fictional stories set in the Klondike Gold Rush, including White Fang and The Call of the Wild, London practiced what he wrote. On July 12, 1897, London and his brother in law, Captain Shepard, sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush. London earned more illnesses than gold, suffering from scurvy and malnutrition, but the experience gave him the ability to very vividly depict stories in the terrain and climate, which would eventually make him an incredibly wealthy celebrity. London’s two most popular novels are The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both of which take place in the Yukon Territory during the Klondike Gold Rush at the end of the 19th-century. White Fang details a wild wolf's journey into a domesticated pet, making it a natural companion novel for his best-known work, The Call of the Wild, which tells the opposite story of a domesticated dog transforming into a wild animal. In both novels, the dog is the story’s protagonist, and London’s novels are also somewhat revolutionary in the way they ascribe human emotions and thoughts to the dog. London’s novels are easy enough to be read by teenagers, but they are complex and vivid enough to captivate adults as well.