Muckrakers, the

Movement of US writers and journalists about 1880–1914 who aimed to expose political, commercial, and corporate corruption, and record frankly the age of industrialism, urban poverty, and conspicuous consumption. Novelists included Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, and Upton Sinclair. The muckrakers were closely associated with Progressivism.

Major figures of the earlier period include Rebecca Harding Davis, Henry George (Progress and Poverty 1879), and Henry Demarest Lloyd (1847–1903). Later, with the growth of journals like McClure's Magazine, the movement included Lincoln Steffens (1866–1936) (The Shame of the Cities 1904), Ida M Tarbell, and Thorstein Veblen (The Theory of the Leisure Class 1904).

Also associated with the Progressive movement in politics, it gave to both US literature and journalism a critical role it was to maintain.