The parents of playwright Arnold Wesker were both immigrants, tailor's machinists, Communists and culturally Jewish atheists. Wesker admitted he was "a very bad student", but his parents provided an envionment of "constant ideological discussion at home, argument and disputation all the time... it was the common currency of day-to-day living that ideas were discussed around the table, and it was taken for granted that there were books in the house and that we would read". The books mostly had a leftward slant (Tolstoy, Gorky, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis) but Wesker soon reached out to Balzac, Maupassant and a broader range of literature'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Wesker Print: Book
'[Jack Ashley] was less prepared for Ruskin [College] than most of the students, having read only two books since leaving school: Jack London's The Iron Heel and the regulations of the Widnes Town Council. But principal Lionel Elvin "appreciated the profound dificulties facing working class students": "When I stumbled through the intricacies of the political theories of Marx, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke and T.H. Green, he marked my work frankly yet gave encouragement... He was an excellent teacher, genuinely interested in discussing ideas and persuading students to express their own"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Ashley Print: Book
'D[inner] Stew, potatoes, rice. Read "The Call of the Wild". Dozed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Frederick William Dunn Print: Book
'Read South Sea Tales by Jack London.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Wed. Not a good day. No letter ... Feeling weak and done to the world.
Read Call of the Wild by Jack London.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'Read "White Fang" by Jack London."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Thomas Print: Book
'I have been reading a horrible book of Jack London's called "The Jacket". If you come across [it]
anywhere, don't read it. it is about the ill-treatment in an American prison, and has me quite
miserable.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
