Frank Norris Summary

Norris, Frank (1870-1903) Born in Chicago on March 5, 1870, Frank Norris is best known as one of the leading lights of American literary naturalism. Having studied art in Paris for a year before atten... Read more

The best work of Benjamin Franklin Norris, Jr. (1870-1902), American novelist and critic, achieves a raw force that has won him an important place in the history of American fiction.Frank Norris was b... Read more

Although he died less than five years after publishing his first novel, Frank Norris stands as one of the key figures of early twentieth-century American literature. In novels such as McTeague: A Stor... Read more

Frank Norris has been viewed as a significant literary critic in one major way. His principal and quite specific image for most has been that of a spokesman for the literary movement which first devel... Read more

In the following essay, Hochman disputes Frank Norris's reputation as a naturalist, contending that the imaginative force of his work “is not to be sought in his naturalist concerns, but... Read more

In the following essay, Lehan traces the connections between Norris and the French writer Émile Zola. There was no American novelist who covered the panorama of economic and historical activ... Read more

In the following essay, Crisler discusses the literary relationship between Norris and American novelist William Dean Howells. The early assessment by Herbert Edwards of the relationship between Wi... Read more

In the following review of Frank Norris of "The Wave," Chamberlain traces the themes of Norris's novels to those of writings he did for The Wave. When he was a student at the U... Read more

In the following excerpt, Grattan expresses a negative opinion of Frank Norris of "The Wave." [Frank Norris of "The Wave"] should be read in conjunction with Volume X: C... Read more

In the following essay, Hill discovers traces of Poe's story in "A Case for Lombroso" and "His Single Blessedness. " An apparent influence upon the early fiction ... Read more

In the following essay, Tatum cites a scientific article about blood transfusion as a probable source for Norris's story "Lauth." Whatever its critical merit as a literary effo... Read more

In the following excerpt, McElrath traces Norris's early development as a journalist and fiction writer. At the same time that Norris—at age 21—was realizing his mother'... Read more

In the following essay, which was first published in the magazine The Wave in 1897, Norris decries established short story authors as writing safe and dull fiction. Is it possible that the short st... Read more

In the following review, the critic praises the stories of the "buccaneer West" in A Deal in Wheat. "A Deal in Wheat" is the first and the shortest of these stories by t... Read more

In the following review, the critic offers a negative appraisal of A Deal in Wheat. The author of The Octopus and The Pit would not, we think, have given to the stories which fill this volume [A De... Read more

In the following review, the critic praises the stories in The Third Circle. Nine times out of ten it is a mistake, or something worse, to go dredging into the back numbers of old magazines and new... Read more