Authors: Theodore Dreiser
ISBN-13: 9780548028766, ISBN-10: 0548028761
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Kessinger Publishing Company
Date Published: July 2007
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Theodre Dreiser was born into a large and impoverished German American family in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1871. He began his writing career as a reporter, working for newspapers in Chicago. Pittsburg, and St. Louis, until an editor friend, Arthur Henry, suggested he write a novel. The result was Sister Carrie, based on the life of Dreiser's own sister Emma, who had run off to New York with a married man. Rejected by several publishers as "immoral," the book was finally accepted by Doubleday and Company, and published-over Frank Doubleday's strong objections-in 1900.
Numerous cuts and changes had been made in the lengthy original manuscript by various hands, including those of Arthur Henry, Dreiser himself. Later, when given to mythologizing his career, Dreiser was to suggest that the publishing history of Sister Carrie had been one of bowdlerization and suppression only; but the publication of his unedited manuscript by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1981 shows that Dreiser approved and even welcomed Henry's and Jug's alterations. (Whether the book was ultimately improved or compromised by their liberal editing is a fascinating and as yet unresolved issue among Dreiser scholars.) Sister Carrie sold poorly, but writers like Frank Norris and William Dean Howells saw it as a breakthrough in American realism, and Dreiser's career as a novelist was launched.
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The Financer "(1912) and "The Titan "(1914) began his trilogy about the rise of a tycoon, but it was" An American Tragedy "(1925), based on newspaper accounts of a sensational murder case, which brought him fame. The novel was dramatized on Broadway and sold to Hollywood. Newly influential and affluent, Dreiservisited Russia and was unimpressed, describing his observations in the skeptical "Dreiser Looks at Russia" (1928). In later years, however, he became an ardent (through unorthodox) Communist, writing political Treatises such as "America Is Worth Saving" (1941) His artistic powers on the wane, Dreiser moved to Hollywood in 1939 and supported himself largely by the sale of film rights of his earlier works. He dies there, in 1945, at the age of seventy-four.
"From the Paperback edition."
Rebecca Burns is editor-in-chief of Atlanta Magazine, which has won numerous regional and national awards under her direction.
The driving forces of our culturerestless idealism, glamorous material seductions, and spiritual innocenceare revealed in Dreiser's transformation of the conventional "fallen woman" story into a genuinely original work of imaginative fiction.
We do not recommend the book to the fastidious reader, or the one who clings to old-fashioned ideas. It is a book one can very well do without reading. -- Books of the Century; New York Times review, May 1907
I. | The Magnet Attracting: A Waif Amid Forces | 1 |
II. | What Poverty Threatened: Of Granite and Brass | 8 |
III. | Wee Question of Fortune: Four-Fifty a Week | 12 |
IV. | The Spendings of Fancy: Facts Answer with Sneers | 20 |
V. | A Glittering Night Flower: The Use of a Name | 30 |
VI. | The Machine and the Maiden: A Knight of To-day | 35 |
VII. | The Lure of the Material: Beauty Speaks for Itself | 45 |
VIII. | Intimations by Winter: An Ambassador Summoned | 53 |
IX. | Convention's Own Tinder-box: The Eye That Is Green | 59 |
X. | The Counsel of Winter: Fortune's Ambassador Calls | 64 |
XI. | The Persuasion of Fashion: Feeling Guards O'er Its Own | 71 |
XII. | Of the Lamps of the Mansions: The Ambassador's Plea | 78 |
XIII. | His Credentials Accepted: A Babel of Tongues | 85 |
XIV. | With Eyes and Not Seeing: One Influence Wanes | 92 |
XV. | The Irk of the Old Ties: The Magic of Youth | 98 |
XVI. | A Witless Aladdin: The Gate to the World | 107 |
XVII. | A Glimpse Through the Gateway: Hope Lightens the Eye | 113 |
XVIII. | Just Over the Border: A Hail and Farewell | 120 |
XIX. | An Hour in Elfland: A Clamour Half Heard | 124 |
XX. | The Lure of the Spirit: The Flesh in Pursuit | 134 |
XXI. | The Lure of the Spirit: The Flesh in Pursuit | 141 |
XXII. | The Blaze of the Tinder: Flesh Wars with the Flesh | 144 |
XXIII. | A Spirit in Travail: One Rung Put Behind | 153 |
XXIV. | Ashes of Tinder: A Face at the Window | 162 |
XXV. | Ashes of Tinder: The Loosing of Stays | 165 |
XXVI. | The Ambassador Fallen: A Search for the Gate | 169 |
XXVII. | When Waters Engulf Us We Reach for a Star | 178 |
XXVIII. | A Pilgrim, an Outlaw: The Spirit Detained | 186 |
XXIX. | The Solace of Travel: The Boats of the Sea | 194 |
XXX. | The Kingdom of Greatness: The Pilgrim Adream | 204 |
XXXI. | A Pet of Good Fortune: Broadway Flaunts Its Joys | 210 |
XXXII. | The Feast of Belshazzar: A Seer to Translate | 217 |
XXXIII. | Without the Walled City: The Slope of the Years | 228 |
XXXIV. | The Grind of the Millstones: A Sample of Chaff | 234 |
XXXV. | The Passing of Effort: The Visage of Care | 241 |
XXXVI. | A Grim Retrogression: The Phantom of Chance | 249 |
XXXVII. | The Spirit Awakens: New Search for the Gate | 257 |
XXXVIII. | In Elf Land Disporting: The Grim World Without | 263 |
XXXIX. | Of Lights and of Shadows: The Parting of Worlds | 271 |
XL. | A Public Dissension: A Final Appeal | 280 |
XLI. | The Strike | 286 |
XLII. | A Touch of Spring: The Empty Shell | 299 |
XLIII. | The World Turns Flatterer: An Eye in the Dark | 306 |
XLIV. | And This Is Not Elf Land: What Gold Will Not Buy | 313 |
XLV. | Curious Shifts of the Poor | 320 |
XLVI. | Stirring Troubled Waters | 331 |
XLVII. | The Way of the Beaten: A Harp in the Wind | 340 |