Martin Eden - Softcover

Martin Eden is a 1909 novel by American author Jack London about a young proletarian autodidact struggling to become a writer. Eden represents writers' frustration with publishers by speculating that when he mails off a manuscript, a "cunning arrangement of cogs" immediately puts it in a new envelope and returns it automatically with a rejection slip. The central theme of Eden's developing artistic sensibilities places the novel in the tradition of the Künstlerroman, in which is narrated the formation and development of an artist. Eden differs from London in that Eden rejects socialism, attacking it as "slave morality", and relies on a Nietzschean individualism.