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 born in Chicago on Mar. 5, 1870, the son of a...

Frank Norris is a central figure in American literary history mainly because of three novels, McTeague (1899), The Octopus (1901), and The Pit (1903). But he is also important because of what he indicates to the cultural historian: his works mirror...

Frank Norris is known principally as an American novelist rather than a western one. He was perceived as a national artist by the majority of his contemporaries, and at the time of his early death in 1902 his sobriquet, the American Zola, even...

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 attending the University of California in Berkeley and then Harvard, Norris worked...

Benjamin Franklin Norris, Jr. (March 5 1870 – October 25 1902) was an American novelist, during the Progressive Era, writing predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague (1899), The Octopus: A California Story (1901), and...

Monarch Notes 01-01-1963 Introduction Early Life: Frank Norris was born in March, 1870, in Chicago. His father was a businessman who provided well for the family and his mother was an actress who retired from the stage when she married. His mother kept alive...

Monarch Notes 01-01-1963 Character Analyses Presley: Many events in the novel are reported through Presley's eyes and many of the reader's reactions, opinions and loyalties are determined by his. He is not, however, the hero or protagonist of the book in a conventional sense,...

In the following essay, Mottram discusses the influence of photography and early motion pictures on Norris's writing.

In the following essay, Civello discusses the recurrent character-type in Norris's fiction known as the “man's woman.”

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 rather in a cluster of preoccupations that center on the vulnerability of the self.”