Jack London was born and raised in the Bay area and was working full-time by the time he was 13 years old. He borrowed money to enroll in classes at the University of California, Berkeley in 1896, but dropped out after a year and headed to the Yukon for a short lived career as a prospector. Upon his return, London's literary career began in earnest, and until his death in 1916, he wrote short stories, novels, essays, poetry, journalism, and memoirs.

The Clinch is a collection of four London works--two novellas and two short stories--on the topic, characters, and context of pugilism in California in the early 20th Century. Included in this anthology are The Game (1905), "A Piece of Steak" (1909), "The Mexican" (1911), and The Abysmal Brute (1913). The Clinch also includes an original introduction by noted scholar and collector J. Lawrence Mitchell (Professor Emeritus, Texas A&M University).