Frank Norris

Benjamin Franklin Norris, Jr. (March 5, 1870 – October 25, 1902) was an American journalist and sometime novelist during the Progressive Era, whose fiction was predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague (1899), The Octopus: A Story of California (1901), and The Pit (1903).

Life

Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1870. His father, Benjamin, was a self-made Chicago businessman and his mother, Gertrude Glorvina Doggett, had a stage career. In 1884 the family moved to San Francisco where Benjamin went into real estate. In 1887, after the death of his brother and a brief stay in London, young Norris went to Académie Julian in Paris where he studied painting for two years and was exposed to the naturalist novels of Émile Zola. Between 1890 and 1894 he attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he became acquainted with the ideas of human evolution of Darwin and Spencer that are reflected in his later writings. His stories appeared in the undergraduate magazine at Berkeley and in the San Francisco Wave. After his parents' divorce he went east and spent a year in the English Department of Harvard University. There he met Lewis E. Gates, who encouraged his writing. He worked as a news correspondent in South Africa (1895–96) for the San Francisco Chronicle, and then as editorial assistant for the San Francisco Wave (1896–97). He worked for McClure's Magazine as a war correspondent in Cuba during the Spanish–American War in 1898. He joined the New York City publishing firm of Doubleday & Page in 1899.

Frank Norris (bishop)

Francis Lushington Norris (1 September 1864 – 2 July 1945) was an Anglican missionary bishop.

Norris was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge.Ordained in 1888, his first ministry position was as a curate at Tewkesbury Abbey. after which he went to China as an SPG missionary. In 1914 he became the Bishop of North China. He retired in 1940 and died on 2 July 1945.

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