Strike gold in the Klondike and lose it on the stock market. Follow the most dynamic, driven, and doomed capitalist in American literature through his rise, his obsession, and his unlikely redemption. Read the complete novel online for free.
Published in 1910, Burning Daylight represents Jack London at the peak of his popularity and the height of his contradictions. The novel’s protagonist, Elam Harnish—known to all as “Burning Daylight”—is the quintessential London hero: a man of immense physical vitality, indomitable will, and primitive energy. He dominates the frozen wastes of the Yukon with the same effortless authority that he will later bring to the jungles of financial speculation. He is a force of nature, a human avalanche, a creature built for conquest.
The novel traces his arc from the Klondike to the boardroom and beyond. Daylight discovers gold, makes a fortune, and descends upon San Francisco like a barbarian upon Rome. He plunges into the world of high finance, matching his frontier cunning against the sophisticated predators of the urban jungle. He wins, of course—he always wins. But winning is not the same as living. He has conquered the world and found it empty. Then he meets Dede Mason, his secretary, and discovers that there are some things money cannot buy and some battles that cannot be won with force.
On this page, you can experience Jack London’s most sustained meditation on the costs of capitalism and the possibility of redemption. We offer the complete 1910 novel for online reading.
Book Info
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Title | Burning Daylight |
| Author | Jack London |
| Year of Publication | 1910 |
| Genre | Novel, Adventure, Social Criticism |
| Language | English |
| Legal Status | Public Domain in the U.S. |
| Format | Online Reading |
Read Burning Daylight Online
Feel the fifty-below zero of the Yukon and the fever-heat of the stock exchange. Begin this epic of American energy by entering the Mazy May claim interactively below.
This preview introduces the king of the Klondike and the men who follow him. However, the full, expansive narrative—the great stampede, the fortune won and risked, the battle with the financial trusts, and the slow, painful education of a heart—is available in the complete text for our subscribers.
A subscription unlocks this essential work of American naturalism and the complete works of Jack London. Discover the novelist who understood that the frontier never closes; it only changes location.
About the Novel Burning Daylight
Burning Daylight is two novels in one. The first half is a classic Jack London adventure, set in the Klondike, pulsing with the energy of the gold rush. The second half is a muckraking exposé of corporate finance, set in San Francisco and Oakland, tracking the transformation of a frontier hero into a capitalist predator. The transition is jarring—London intended it to be. He wanted to show that the same energies that built empires in the wilderness could destroy souls in the city.
Daylight in the Klondike
The novel opens in the frozen heart of the Yukon. Elam Harnish, “Burning Daylight,” is the most successful prospector in the territory. He has survived starvation, blizzards, and the treachery of lesser men. He leads the great stampede to new diggings with the confidence of a general. He is not merely strong; he is magnetic, a leader of men who commands loyalty without demanding it. London renders this world with the authority of personal experience; he had been there, suffered there, and never forgotten what the cold felt like on skin and soul.
The Great Gamble
Daylight’s fortune is not won through patient labor but through a single, audacious gamble. He stakes everything on a hunch, risks death to reach a remote claim, and emerges with millions. This pattern—risk, reward, risk again—will define his life. He is not a builder but a gambler, a man who trusts his instincts and his luck. In the Klondike, this makes him a hero. In San Francisco, it makes him a menace.
The Financial Jungle
When Daylight descends upon San Francisco, he finds a world that is simultaneously familiar and alien. The same instincts that served him in the wilderness—aggression, suspicion, the willingness to strike first—are equally valuable in the boardroom. But the stakes are different. In the Klondike, defeat meant death. In the city, defeat means merely poverty—and Daylight, who has faced death without flinching, finds himself terrified of poverty. He becomes obsessed with accumulation, driven by a fear he cannot name.
The Battle with the Trusts
The middle section of the novel follows Daylight’s campaign against the organized financial interests that control the West. He fights them with their own weapons—cornering markets, manipulating stocks, forming counter-trusts. He wins. He breaks them. He becomes the very thing he fought. This irony is central to London’s critique: capitalism does not have winners and losers; it has only participants, all of whom are deformed by the game.
Dede Mason: The Counter-Force
Dede Mason, Daylight’s secretary, is the novel’s moral center. She is educated, refined, independent. She refuses Daylight’s advances not because she is indifferent but because she recognizes that his wealth has corrupted him. She demands that he become worthy of her—not richer, not more powerful, but more human. Her conditions are simple: give up the game, leave the city, return to the land. Daylight, for the first time in his life, encounters something he cannot buy and cannot conquer. He must earn it, slowly, painfully, by becoming someone else.
The Pastoral Conclusion
The final third of the novel follows Daylight’s retreat from San Francisco to the Sonoma Valley. He buys a ranch, learns to farm, discovers the satisfactions of working with his hands and living in rhythm with the seasons. Dede joins him, marries him, bears his children. The conclusion is deliberately idyllic, almost utopian. London, the socialist, the believer in the dignity of labor, the critic of industrial capitalism, offers his hero a way out: not forward, but back. Back to the land. Back to the body. Back to life.
The Contradiction
Burning Daylight embodies the central contradiction of Jack London’s work and life. He was a socialist who made a fortune from his writing, a believer in the dignity of labor who employed servants, a critic of capitalism who lived like a capitalist. Daylight’s trajectory—from wilderness hero to financial predator to gentleman farmer—mirrors London’s own restless searching for a life that could satisfy both his hunger for success and his longing for meaning. The novel does not resolve the contradiction; it enacts it.
Why Read the Novel Burning Daylight Today?
Because it is Jack London at his most personal and most divided. It is a novel about money and what money does to the soul, about the frontier and its disappearance, about the possibility of redemption in a world that offers no second chances. It is also, simply, a great story, full of adventure and romance and the unmistakable pulse of London’s prose. Read it for the Klondike. Read it for the stock exchange. Read it for the man who could not decide which world he belonged to.
FAQ
Is this novel autobiographical?
In significant ways, yes. London had been a gold prospector in the Klondike, had made and lost fortunes, had bought a ranch in Sonoma, and had struggled to find peace in his final years. Daylight’s trajectory mirrors London’s own.
Why is it called Burning Daylight?
The nickname refers to Elam Harnish’s habit of working through the night, “burning daylight” by lamplight, refusing to waste a single hour of potential productivity. It is an apt name for a man driven by an almost demonic energy.
Is the ending happy?
The ending is idyllic but fragile. London wrote it in 1910, six years before his death by suicide. The peace that Daylight finds on the ranch is the peace that London himself sought and never fully achieved. The happiness is real; the shadows are gathering.
How does it compare to The Call of the Wild?
The Call of the Wild is a perfect book, a masterpiece of compression and power. Burning Daylight is looser, more expansive, more contradictory. It is also more personal. If The Call of the Wild is London’s myth of himself, Burning Daylight is his confession.
Can I read it on my phone?
Yes. The novel moves quickly, driven by Daylight’s relentless energy. It is ideal for readers who want adventure with philosophical weight.