The Pit : A Story of Chicago

The Pit deals with the rough and tumble world of the commodity trading pits at the Chicago Board of Trade Building. This was originally written as the second volume in a planned trilogy; the first book The Octopus : A Story of California is also published in a matching volume by the same publisher. The planned third book was never written. In any case, although part of a trilogy, each book is independent and not connected to the other volumes - the only connection is that all three books were to deal with different aspects of the wheat growing cycle.

Frank Norris was an American author who wrote primarily in the naturalist genre, focusing on the impact of corruption and turn-of-the-century capitalism on common people. Best known for his novel McTeague and for the first two parts of his unfinished The Epic of the Wheat trilogyThe Octopus: A Story of California and The Pit, Norris wrote prolifically during his lifetime. Following his education at the Acad?mie Julian in Paris, University of California, Berkeley, and at Harvard University, Norris worked as a news correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, and covered the Spanish-American War in Cuba for McClure s Magazine. Norris died suddenly in 1902 of peritonitis, leaving The Wolf: A Story of Empire, the final part of his Wheat trilogy, incomplete.