The Pit: A Story of Chicago

New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903. First edition, first printing. Publisher's full red cloth, illustratively stamped and ruled in gilt. Octavo. 421. Missing ffep, lightly pressed corners, moderate edge-wear, cloth starting at corner tips, previous owner name in pen on front paste-down, still a very good copy.

"In his last book and his greatest book, 'The Pit,' he writes as one more inspired--and purely in his own vivid, dramatic and intense way." (The Courier-Journal, Jan. 1903) The Pit, published posthumously just a year after Frank Norris' unexpected death at the age of 32, was the second book of a planned trilogy titled The Epic of the Wheat. "These novels, while forming a series, will be in no way connected with each other save only in their relation to (1) the production, (2) the distribution, (3) the consumption of American wheat. [...] 'The Pit,' is the fictitious narrative of a 'deal' in the Chicago wheat pit" (prefatory note). The third and final book, The Wolf, was never started.