title: McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (Twentieth Century Classics)
author:  Frank Norris 
description: The novelist Frank Norris is almost forgotten today, but in books like "McTeague," published in 1899, he paved the way for a whole generation of American writers--a generation that included <a href="/exec/obidos/Author=Dreiser%2C%20Theodore/${0}">Theodore Dreiser</a> and <a href="/exec/obidos/Author=Lewis%2C%20Sinclair/${0}">Sinclair Lewis</a> and, less directly, <a href="/exec/obidos/Author=Hemingway%2C%20Ernest/${0}">Hemingway</a> and <a href="/exec/obidos/Author=Fitzgerald%2C%20F.%20Scott/{0}">Fitzgerald</a>. McTeague is a dentist saddled with a grasping wife, and the book chronicles his rise and fall in awkward but powerful prose. This type of social realism, so contrary to the uplifting entertainment of the day (and to <a href="/exec/obidos/Author=Twain%2C%20Mark/${0}">Mark Twain</a>'s more fanciful, comic novels), provided turn-of-the-century America a disturbing mirror in which to view itself.
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  ![cover](resources/_cover_.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Frank Norris
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  Chapter I
  
  
  Chapter II
  
  
  Chapter III
  
  
  Chapter IV
  
  
  Chapter V
  
  
  Chapter VI
  
  
  Chapter VII
  
  
  Chapter VIII
  
  
  Chapter IX
  
  
  Chapter X
  
  
  Chapter XI
  
  
  Chapter XII
  
  
  Chapter XIII
  
  
  Chapter XIV
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Chapter I
  
  
  
  
  
    
  IT had just struck nine from the cuckoo clock that hung over the
  
  
  mantelpiece in the dining-room, when Victorine brought in the halved
  
  
  watermelon and set it in front of Mr. Bessemer's plate. Then she went
  
  
  down to the front door for the damp, twisted roll of the Sunday
  
  
  morning's paper, and came back and rang the breakfast- bell for the
  
  
  second time.
  
  
    
  As the family still hesitated to appear, she went to the bay
  
  
  window at the end of the room, and stood there for a moment looking
  
  
  out. The view was wonderful. The Bessemers lived upon the Washington
  
  
  Street hill, almost at its very summit, in a flat in the third story
  
  
  of the building