Joseph Noel says that George Sterling described London's portion of the book, as "a spiritual misprint, a typographical error half a volume long" and says "His vocabulary, in the letters of Herbert Wace, sounds as if taken that day from an encyclopedia by a conscientious sophomore."
Biographers have been intrigued by The Kempton-Wace Letters for the light it seems to shed on Jack London's life and ideas. Strunsky was named as the co-respondent in Jack London's divorce from his first wife, Bessie, but biographers generally agree that his relation with the younger Strunsky was platonic. They were active in socialism and the literary group, "The Crowd", in San Francisco.
In the novel, London expresses his theories about the "Mother-Woman" and the "Mate-Woman," roles which seem to correspond to the roles played by his first wife and his second. After London's death in 1916, Strunsky published a memoir in The Masses in 1917 about their relationship.