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Frank Norris (Benjamin Franklin Norris), 1870–1902, American novelist, b. Chicago. After studying in Paris, at the Univ. of California (1890–94), and Harvard, he wrote McTeague (1899), a proletarian novel influenced by the experimental naturalism of Zola. His most impressive work was his proposed trilogy, "The Epic of Wheat," of which only two parts were written : The Octopus (1901), depicting the brutal struggle between the wheat farmers and the railroad, and The Pit (1903), dealing with speculation on the Chicago grain market. Norris spent several years as a war correspondent in South Africa (1895–96) and Cuba (1898). The Responsibilities of the Novelist (1903), a collection of essays, contains his idealistic views on the role of the writer.
See study by B. Hochman (1988).
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