Ernest Poole (1880-1950) was born in Chicago and educated at Princeton. In 1902 he began his writing career as a muckraking journalist, living in a settlement house in the New York slums to further his research into the causes and conditions of poverty. He published twenty-four books, including works of fiction, history, and journalism. Patrick Chura is an associate professor of English at the University of Akron, Ohio.

"Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Frank Norris’s The Octopus and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath are still readable and powerful enough to move the reader, but most other examples of American protest fiction must be soldiered through. To the small company of exceptions should be added The Harbor itself, by Ernest Poole, which Penguin Classics has rescued from oblivion." — Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World