Dreiser, Theodore [Herman Albert] (1871–1945),born at Terre Haute, Ind., of a poor and intensely religious family, who taught him to shun many human experiences as degrading or destructive. He early developed a yearning for wealth, society, and the kind of life which he later gave to his hero Cowperwood, an unscrupulous magnate of big business, who is the subject of an exhaustive character study in
The Financier (1912),
The Titan (1914), and
The Stoic (1947).
After a period of newspaper reporting in St. Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and New York, stimulated by reading Balzac, and released from his crass success‐worship by studying Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer, he came to see life as a strangely magnificent composite of warring energies, having no plan or purpose. His journalism and hackwork were temporarily interrupted by the writing of
Sister Carrie (1900), the story of a working girl and her life as the mistress of a man who descends the social scale as she rises to success as an actress. The publishers withheld the novel from circulation because they were disturbed by its amoral treatment of Carrie's life, and so Dreiser did not earn enough royalties or gain a wide enough reputation to allow him to retire from commercial activities, including the editing of pulp magazines and women's fashion journals, until the publication of
Jennie Gerhardt (1911), the story of a woman who sacrifices her own interests rather than jeopardize her lover's social and economic security by opposing his marriage.
In
The “Genius” (1915), the story of a gifted but weak artist, and
An American Tragedy (1925), the story of a youth of unstable character trapped by circumstances that lead to his execution for murder, Dreiser sets forth his naturalistic concept of American society. This view, developed in the four previous books, concludes that, since the chaotic nature of life precludes spiritual satisfactions, it is normal and right to take the most one can from the economic grab bag. Dreiser has been acclaimed for this sincere and profound consciousness of the tragedy of life as he saw it in America, despite the ugliness of his heavy style, and his structural incompetence, chaotic verbosity, and sometimes confused character drawing. Often bogged down by clumsy writing, his books nevertheless are endowed with power by sheer force and an honest massing of details. In
Dreiser Looks at Russia (1928),
Tragic America (1931), and
America Is Worth Saving (1941), he expressed hopeful belief in socialism, as opposed to his former confused naturalism, while
The Bulwark (1946) emphasized the place of spiritual values in the life of the modern individual.
His many other writings include
Plays of the Natural and Supernatural (1916);
The Hand of the Potter (1918), a tragedy;
Free (1918),
Chains (1927), and
A Gallery of Women (2 vols., 1929), short story collections;
Moods, Cadenced and Declaimed (1926, enlarged 1928), a book of poetry;
Hey Rub‐a‐Dub‐Dub (1920), essays setting forth his philosophic views;
The Color of a Great City (1923) and
My City (1929), vignettes of New York;
Twelve Men (1919), studies of actual persons, including one of his brother, Paul Dresser, whom he is said to have assisted in writing
On the Banks of the Wabash; and the autobiographical works,
A Traveler at Forty (1913),
A Hoosier Holiday (1916),
A Book About Myself (1922), which was republished as
Newspaper Days (1931), and
Dawn (1931). His
Letters was published in 1959 (3 vols.), and his
American Diaries, 1902–1926 was printed in 1982.
