When God Laughs and Other Stories

Author: John "Jack" Griffith London (1876-1916)Year: 1911Publisher: MacMillian and CompanyPlace: New YorkDescription:ix+319+[1]+[4 ad] pages with frontispiece and five plates. Small octavo (7 1/2" x 5 1/4") bound in original publisher's olive green cloth decorated in red and light green and lettered in gilt. (BAL 11926; Sissons & Martens, p 51) First edition with 3,758 copies printed. Named after the first story — about a couple that tries in vain to uphold an intensely idealistic romance against the erosions of time and the inconstancy of human nature — the collection explores themes for which London became famous: the struggle for survival in the midst of hostile environments, human nature's most elemental drives, and worker abuse in industrialized society. In The Apostate his concerns with the working poor and his dislike of pre-union-era capitalism are evident in a grim story about a young man who is brutalized by the subhuman working conditions in a textile mill, yet achieves