Frank Norris - Biography, Bibliography

Writer, born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. His family moved to California (1884), and he studied art in London and Paris. His interest in art waned and he returned to study at the University of California (1890–4), and Harvard (1895). He worked as a journalist and covered the Boer War for the San Francisco Chronicle (1895–6), and then became a staff member for The Wave (1896), a San Francisco literary magazine. Moving to New York City, he covered the Spanish-American War for McClure's magazine (1898), and worked for Doubleday, Page & Co (from 1899). He was influenced by the naturalistic work of Emile Zola, as seen in his best-known fiction, McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899) and The Octopus (1901). He died shortly after an appendix operation.

Frank Norris

Born:	5 March 1870 Chicago, Illinois
Died:	25 October 1902 San Francisco, California
Occupation:	Writer

Benjamin Franklin Norris (5 March 1870, Chicago – 25 October 1902) was an American novelist during the Progressive Era, the United States' first important naturalist writer. His notable works include McTeague (1899), The Octopus: A California Story (1901), and The Pit (1903).

Biography

Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1870, and moved to San Francisco at the age of fourteen. He worked as a news correspondent in South Africa in 1895–96, and then an editorial assistant on the San Francisco Wave (1896–97). Norris died in 1902 of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, leaving his young wife and baby and leaving The Epic of Wheat trilogy unfinished.

Norris' McTeague has been filmed repeatedly, most famously as a 1924 film called Greed by director Erich von Stroheim, which is today considered a classic of silent cinema. An opera by William Bolcolm, based loosely on this 1899 novel, was premiered by Chicago's Lyric Opera in 1992.

Bibliography

Moran of the Lady Letty (1898) A Man's Woman (1900) The Responsibilities of the Novelist (1903) — a collection of essay on the role of the writer

The San Francisco trilogy:

McTeague (1899) — a naturalist work about the life and trials of a dentist in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, California.

The Epic of Wheat trilogy:

The Octopus: A California Story (1901) — describes the raising of wheat in California and the conflict between the wheat growers and a railway company; The Pit (1903) — the second novel in the trilogy, about wheat speculation on the Chicago Board of Trade. The third novel, Wolf, was never written but was to have shown the American-grown wheat relieving a famine-stricken village in Europe. (New York: The Library of America, 1986) Includes Vandover and the Brute, McTeague, and The Octopus, with selected essays on literary subjects.