The Scarlet Plague was written in 1910 but not serialized until the May–June 1912 issue of London Magazine.
It was published as a book in 1915 by Macmillan.

London published The Scarlet Plague in book form at a point in his career that biographers and critics have called a "professional decline", from September 1912 to May 1916.
In this period, he stopped writing short works and shifted to longer works including The Abysmal Brute (1913), John Barleycorn (1913), The Mutiny of the Elsinore (1914), The Star Rover (1915), among others.

The Scarlet Plague was later reprinted in the February 1949 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries.

Jack London was inspired in part by Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 short story "The Masque of the Red Death".
Both Poe's story and London's fall into a genre of apocalyptic fiction featuring a universal plague that nearly wipes out humanity.
Other examples include Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826), George R. Stewart's Earth Abides (1949), Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain (1969) and Stephen King's The Stand (1978).
The Scarlet Plague was written in 1910 but not serialized until the May–June 1912 issue of London Magazine. It was published as a book in 1915 by Macmillan.
London published The Scarlet Plague in book form at a point in his career that biographers and critics have called a "professional decline", from September 1912 to May 1916. In this period, he stopped writing short works and shifted to longer works including The Abysmal Brute (1913), John Barleycorn (1913), The Mutiny of the Elsinore (1914), The Star Rover (1915), among others.
The Scarlet Plague was later reprinted in the February 1949 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries.
Jack London was inspired in part by Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 short story "The Masque of the Red Death". Both Poe's story and London's fall into a genre of apocalyptic fiction featuring a universal plague that nearly wipes out humanity. Other examples include Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826), George R. Stewart's Earth Abides (1949), Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain (1969) and Stephen King's The Stand (1978).
The Scarlet Plague