A Newly-Discovered Norris Newspaper Publication Sheds Light on His Work at McClure’s

Scholars have long recognized that the approximately two years Frank Norris spent working for the S. S. McClure organization between the early spring of 1898 and the very last day of 1899 were important ones in his career. During this time, Norris published his romance novels Moran of the Lady Letty (1898) and A Man’s Woman (1900), as well as Blix (1899) and his masterpiece McTeague (1899), with the Doubleday & McClure division of the firm. In addition, the connections he made through his work for McClure’s Associated Literary Press newspaper syndicate most likely led to the serialized newspaper publication of Moran of the Lady Letty in 1898 and A Man’s Woman in 1899. Furthermore, during his time with the McClure’s enterprise Norris came to know Frank Doubleday, who from January 1900 forward would employ him at Doubleday, Page & Co. as a manuscript reader; this firm published The Octopus (1901), The Pit (1903), A Deal in Wheat (1903), and, eventually, Vandover and the Brute (1914). Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., and Jesse S. Crisler are thus correct to conclude, “Norris was indebted to S. S. McClure for giving him his entré into the New York publishing world in early 1898” (361). Yet, despite the significant advances Norris made during these years, in general scholars have concluded that McClure proved an impediment to Norris’s development as a writer by not publishing his war dispatches from Cuba in McClure’s Magazine and by burdening him with mundane office editorial duties. Curiously enough, this is the same charge often leveled at McClure by fans of Willa Cather, who worked as an editor for McClure from 1906 to 1912. The recent discovery of a story written by Norris, originally published in The Wave in June 1897 and syndicated by McClure’s Associated Literary Press in early April 1898, however, complicates this narrative about the negative effects of Norris’s office duties on his growth as a fiction writer.

What does the discovery of this story, “Easter Bonnets (Marked Down),” and its publication in the Boston Sunday Globe, Portland Sunday Oregonian, and Omaha Daily Bee represent? First, this information gives us a better idea of the kind of work Norris was referring to when he told correspondents he was “writing” for the syndicate. Second, its syndication shows that Norris, very early on at the McClure firm, as he would do in 1899 with his story “A Salvation Boom in Matebeleland,” was taking advantage of the syndicate outlet to publicize his work and name outside his previous, more limited range of Wave readers; the three newspapers in which “Easter Bonnets” was published represent not only the Pacific Northwest (Portland), but also the Midwest (Omaha) and the East Coast (Boston). Third, specific ways in which Norris altered the text signal his growing awareness of the symbiotic relationship between art, the publishing industry, and commercial interests. Finally, the story’s syndication indicates that Norris, very early on during his tenure at McClure’s, was using his time to learn how to revise his writing in certain ways in order to make it more realistic. Overall, this discovery suggests that the non-novel-writing work that Norris did during his years McClure’s should not be slighted as having completely bogged down Norris’s career; in fact, some of this work appears to have helped improve his fiction writing.

Norris scholars have thus far based their charges about the detrimental effects of Norris’s affiliation with the McClure organization on rather flimsy evidence; indeed, it has never been precisely documented what his office duties and editing work were, much less how they might have affected his own writing. We do know that the original terms of his engagement with the McClure’s organization were outlined in a letter Norris wrote to John S. Phillips, McClure’s right-hand man, business partner, and managing editor, on 18 February 1898. In this letter, Norris accepted Phillips’s “offer to write for your syndicate and for the magazine at the salary we spoke of (fifty dollars per month)” (McElrath...