RYE, NY—Workers inventorying the estate of a recently deceased Westchester County art dealer earlier this month reportedly stumbled upon a draft of a previously unknown Jack London novel titled The Doggy, and the work is already being hailed by many within the literary world as a masterpiece. “The Doggy is a gripping tale of a playful 3-year-old yellow Labrador retriever in the Yukon and shows London, the master of vivid naturalist prose, at the height of his literary powers,” said Columbia University professor Andrew Spellman of the longhand manuscript that is believed to have been penned in 1908 and chronicles the everyday life of a dog named Cody as he gnaws on fur-lined boots, scampers after tennis balls, and gives big, wet, sloppy kisses. “Indeed, one cannot read The Doggy without feeling the author’s intensity for the subject, from the untamed ferocity of Cody’s howls when he hears the doorbell ring, to the raw yearning seen in the doggy’s eyes when he wants his big old tummy rubbed.” According to Spellman, this is the most significant discovery in American literature since a copy of Robert Frost’s unpublished poem “Brrrrrr, It’s Cold” turned up in 2003.

Advertisement