Robert Scholes and Clifford Wulfman define modernism and modernity this way: "Modernity is a social condition. Modernism was a response to that condition." Modernity "is an urban condition" "reached in certain parts of the world in the late nineteenth century ... a mass phenomenon" characterised by the rise of technology, print culture, and material consumption. Jack London, who is routinely categorised as a naturalist and realist, can also be called a modernist. The word modern appears often in the pages of this handbook, and though it is not new to call London a modernist, the breadth of scholarship in this present volume gives the categorisation new meaning.