The 30 Minute Rule begins October 14 at 7:00 PM EDT. An Initial Bid Must Be Placed By October 14 at 6:00 PM EDT To Participate After 6:00 PM EDT
AMS signed "Jack London, Oakland, Calif., April 16, 1907," 39 pages, 7.75 x 9.75, headed, "A Curious Fragment." Remarkable 39-page handwritten manuscript draft of Jack London’s dystopian tale “A Curious Fragment,” a prophetic vision of class warfare, suppressed literacy, and the revolutionary power of the printed word.
Set some six centuries in the future, London’s story imagines an authoritarian industrial society in which reading and writing have been deliberately “stamped out,” leaving oral “professional story tellers” to preserve forbidden histories. Composed in 1907, the same year as his celebrated dystopian novel The Iron Heel, “A Curious Fragment” develops many of London’s recurring concerns: oligarchic power, economic inequality, industrial exploitation, and the possibility of organized resistance.
The story is framed as a surviving historical fragment from the 28th century, looking back upon “the fifth century of the terrible industrial oligarchy that was reared upon the ruins of the early Republic.” In this oppressive world, laborers—whom London pointedly calls “slaves”—are forbidden to read or write. The central episode recounts how a literate worker presents a petition of grievances to his employer in gruesomely symbolic fashion: accompanied by a severed arm lost in a factory accident at Hell’s Bottom.
The tale culminates in an impassioned appeal by John Tourney to his fellow laborers: “There is power in the printed word.” He urges them to learn to read, promising that books—especially history books—will teach them about their masters and help them acquire the strength necessary to overthrow oppression. London’s introductory note grimly records the consequence: on January 25, 2734, Tourney was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude in the borax mines of the Arizona Desert for spreading his message among the workers.
The manuscript is bound in elaborately gilt-tooled morocco, top edge gilt, with the front board and first manuscript leaf detached; the manuscript itself is otherwise in very good condition, with edges trimmed closely by the binder.
Provenance: L. H. Kauffman (bookplate); Willard S. Morse Collection, sold at Christie's New York, May 20, 1988, lot 203.
“A Curious Fragment” was first published in Town Topics on December 10, 1908, for which London received $100, and was later collected in When God Laughs and Other Stories (Macmillan, 1911). Scholars have compared its economic and social vision to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, while recognizing London’s markedly more militant conception of historical change. As Eric S. Rabkin observed in Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology, the tale adopts fundamentally Marxist assumptions about economic conflict while retaining an optimism that distinguishes it from later dystopian works such as Brave New World.
An exceptionally desirable working manuscript from one of America’s great literary figures, filled with London’s revisions and corrections and offering a vivid glimpse into the composition of one of his most provocative speculative stories.
This item is Pre-Certified by PSA/DNA
Buy a third-party letter of authenticity for
$50.00
*This item has been pre-certified by a trusted third-party authentication service, and by placing a bid on this item, you agree to accept the opinion of this authentication service. If you wish to have an opinion rendered by a different authenticator of your choosing, you must do so prior to your placing of any bid. RR Auction is not responsible for differing opinions submitted 30 days after the date of the sale.
Third-party authentication service applies only to signatures and handwriting, and does not cover the addition of sketches, artwork, musical quotations, etc.
