The Little Lady of the Big House: A novel by Jack London

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The story concerns a love triangle. The protagonist, Dick Forrest, is a rancher with a poetic streak (his acorn song recalls London’s play, The Acorn Planters ). His wife, Paula, is a vivacious, athletic, and sexually self-aware woman, who falls in love with Evan Graham, an old friend of her husband. Unable to choose between the two men, she wounds herself mortally with a rifle in what her husband is certain is a suicide.

Biographer Clarice Stasz writes that the book is not autobiography , but speaks of London’s frank borrowing from his life with Charmian , his second wife, and says it is psychologically valid as a mirror of events during [the] winter [of 1912-13] . Paula, like Charmian, is subject to insomnia and is unable to bear children. Based on a reading of Charmian’s diary, Stasz identifies Evan Graham with two real-life men named Laurie Smith and Allan Dunn.

Even minor characters can be identified; Forrest’s servant Oh My resembles London’s valet Nakata. The long-bearded hobo philosopher Aaron Hancock resembles Frank Strawn-Hamilton, who was a long-term guest at the London ranch. Sculptor Haakan Frolich makes an appearance as the sculptor Froelig , and painter Xavier Martinez appears under his own name.