Books by Frank Norris

Vandover, fresh out of college and the son of a wealthy owner of slum properties, has dreams of being an artist but lacks the discipline to fulfill them. His seduction of a young woman results in her suicide and the death of his own father. Cheated by false friends of part of his patrimony, Vandover gambles away the rest.

The text of this edition presents, fully annotated, the 1899 First Edition text of McTeague, a significant example of American literary naturalism and a commentary on turn-of-the-century American cultural values.

McTeague (1899) tells the story of charlatan dentist McTeague and his wife Trina, and their spiralling descent into moral corruption. Norris is often considered to be the `American Zola', and this passionate tale of greed, degeneration, and death is one of the most purely naturalistic American novels of the nineteenth century. It also formed the basis for Erich von Stroheim's cult film, Greed (1923).