Lost Face is a collection of seven short stories by
Jack London . It takes its name from the first short story in the book, about a European adventurer in the Yukon who outwits his (American) Indian captors’ plans to torture him. The book includes London’s best-known short story, ‘
To Build a Fire ‘.
John Griffith London (born
John Griffith Chaney ; January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction. London was part of the radical literary group ‘The Crowd’ in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of unionization, workers’ rights, socialism, and eugenics. He wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, War of the Classes, and Before Adam. His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both 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 about the South Pacific in stories such as ‘The Pearls of Parlay’, and ‘The Heathen’.