"McTeague" from Frank Norris. American novelist, during the Progressive Era (1870-1902).

"Moran of the Lady Letty" from Frank Norris. American novelist, during the Progressive Era (1870-1902).

"The Octopus" from Frank Norris. American novelist, during the Progressive Era (1870-1902).

"The Pit" from Frank Norris. American novelist, during the Progressive Era (1870-1902).

"Vandover and the Brute" from Frank Norris. American novelist, during the Progressive Era (1870-1902).

Rejected by nineteenth-century publishers for its sordid and shocking subject matter, Vandover and the Brute is a powerful novel of turn-of-the-century San Francisco.

The Octopus: A Story of California is a 1901 novel by Frank Norris and was meant to be the first part of an uncompleted trilogy, The Epic of the Wheat. It describes the wheat industry in California, and the conflicts between wheat growers and a railway company. Norris was inspired to write the novel by the Central Pacific Railroad and the Mussel Slough Tragedy. In the novel he depicts the tensions between the railroad, the ranchers and the ranchers' League. The book emphasized the control of "forces"-such as growing wheat and the power of railroad monopolies-over individuals.