The Dust

In public-domain English fiction resources, The Dust usually refers to the novel The Grain of Dust by the American writer David Graham Phillips, often shortened to The Dust. The novel opens in a prominent New York law firm, Lockyer, Sanders, Benchley, Lockyer & Norman: on a winter afternoon, a young woman comes into the office to apply for a stenographic and typing position, and in the vast, noisy city she seems as insignificant as a grain of dust. The story unfolds around the acquaintance, marriage, and life together of this woman, Dorothea Hallowell, and the firm's young partner Frederick Norman. Norman is shrewd and ambitious, regarding the law as a business serving the profit of capital, with generosity and conceit coexisting in his character; their relationship moves from the ordinary to a deep mutual dependence, and a brief separation plunges both into intense longing. Through the experience of a man and a woman, the work presents the office ecology, the wealth gap, and the complex facets of human nature in early twentieth-century New York, continuing Phillips's characteristic attention to and critique of social reality. It should be noted that The Dust circulating online may also refer to other works of the same title; this entry is based on the version commonly found in public-domain English fiction collections, and this electronic collection carries no specific publication details.