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Benjamin Franklin Norris was born in Chicago in 1870. At the age of 14 Norris and his family moved to San Francisco. After studying at San Francisco University (1890-94) Norris travelled to South Africa where he attempted to establish himself as a travel writer. He wrote about the Boer War for the San Francisco Chronicle but was deported from the country after being captured by the Boer Army.

Norris returned to San Francisco where he joined the staff of the magazine, The Wave. A sea story written by Norris was serialized in the magazine and was later published as a novel, Moran of the Lady Letty (1898). During this period he worked for the publishers Doubleday.

Norris continued to work as a journalist and reported the Spanish-American War for McClure's Magazine. This was followed by a couple of novels, McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899) and A Man's Woman (1900). Norris, who had been greatly influenced by the work of Emile Zola, also began work on a trilogy, The Epic of Wheat. The first book, The Octopus (1901), described the struggle between farming and railroad interests in California. In August 1902, Everybody's Magazine published an article by Norris, A Deal in Wheat, exposing corrupt business dealings in agriculture.

Frank Norris died following an appendix operation in 1902. The second book in the trilogy, The Pitt, about the manipulation of the wheat market, was published posthumously in 1903. The third part, The Wolf, was never written.

Also published posthumously was The Responsibility of the Novelist (1903). The book argues for naturalistic writing based on actual experience and observation. This book, and his novels, influenced a generation of writers including Upton Sinclair, David Graham Phillips, Floyd Dell, Theodore Dreiser, Charles Edward Russell and Sinclair Lewis.

 

 

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(1) Frank Norris, The Responsibility of the Novelist (1903)

I never truckled; I never took off the hat to Fashion and held it out for pennies. By God, I told them the truth.


(2) Upton Sinclair, interviewed by William E. Martin (19th November, 1930)

Frank Norris had a great influence upon me because I read The Octopus when I was young and knew very little about what was happening in America. He showed me a new world, and he also showed me that it could be put in a novel.


(3) Floyd Dell, Homecoming (1933)

Frank Norris's novel, The Octopus stirred my mind. And that spring, down in a small park near my home, I heard a man make a Socialist speech to a small and indifferent crowd. Afterwards I talked to him; he was a street-sweeper. I believe William Morris has a street-sweeper Socialist in News from Nowhere; but this was not a literary echo, this Socialist street-sweeper in Quincy - he was real. And my long-slumbering Socialism woke up.

 

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