Who wrote the dystopian novel The Iron Heel, first published in 1908?

Jack London wrote the dystopian novel The Iron Heel, first published in 1908.

The novel imagines a future in which an oligarchic ruling class, called the Iron Heel, suppresses a socialist revolution in the United States. London presents the story through the fictional memoirs of Avis Everhard, with historical commentary added by a later editor from the imagined future.

The book was published before many works now more commonly associated with dystopian fiction, including Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Its focus is political repression, class conflict, labor organization, and the concentration of economic power.

A common mix-up is identifying H. G. Wells as the author because Wells also wrote influential speculative fiction about future societies. London, however, is the author of The Iron Heel and is also known for The Call of the Wild and White Fang.