Norris studied art in Paris, attended the University of California and Harvard University. He travelled to South Africa as a news correspondent in 1895. From 1896-97, he was an editorial assistant at the San Francisco Wave and, in 1898, acted as war correspondent, during the Spanish-American conflict, in Cuba for McClure's Magazine. Influenced by Zola, Norris adopted the Naturalist school which is evident in his first successful, and probably best, novel McTeague (1899), which deals with lower-class life in San Francisco. His projected trilogy, The Epic of the Wheat, was never completed, however two of the parts, The Octopus (1901) and The Pit (1903 posthumous) did achieve publication. |
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