author Jack London about a young sailor struggling to
become a writer. Living in Oakland at the beginning of the 20th century, Martin Eden struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances through an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, hoping to achieve a place among the literary elite. His principal motivation is his love for Ruth Morse. Because Eden is a rough, uneducated sailor from a working-class background and the Morses are a bourgeois family, a union between them would be impossible unless and until he reached their level of wealth and refinement.
It is a semi-autobiographical novel. Moreover, the character of Ruth Morse was modelled on Mabel Applegarth — the first love of London's life.