Dreiser, Theodore (1871–1945), novelist.Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, the son of German‐American parents, Theodore Dreiser endured poverty and ostracism as a boy. The popular songwriter Paul Dresser (1857–1911) was his brother. Dreiser worked as a reporter in
Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and New York, absorbing impressions of urban crime and vice, wealth and poverty. His journalistic experience, Balzac's novels, and Herbert Spencer's
social Darwinism turned him toward determinism and fictional realism. His first novel,
Sister Carrie (1900), a tale of a young woman's career in the city, was attacked as immoral or found shocking and grim by most critics.
Jennie Gerhardt (1911), the story of an impoverished young woman driven by family poverty to become a rich man's mistress, was championed by young writers rebelling against the Victorian idealism dominating American fiction and criticism. In
The Financier (1912) and
The Titan (1914) Dreiser chronicled the rise of the fictional robber baron Frank Cowperwood, modeled on the Chicago financier and traction magnate Charles Yerkes (1837–1905). Dreiser's autobiographical novel
The “Genius” (1915) was banned for nearly a decade. His masterpiece,
An American Tragedy (1925), is a powerfully documented narrative about a young man impelled by ambition and dreams of wealth to plot the murder of his pregnant sweetheart. In the 1930s Dreiser was sporadically active in radical politics.
The Bulwark (1946) tells of a Quaker whose faith is tested, and
The Stoic (1947) concluded the Cowperwood trilogy.
See also
Literature: Civil War to World War I;
Literature: Since World War I.
Bibliography
Ellen Moers , Two Dreisers, 1969.
Richard Lingeman , Theodore Dreiser: At the Gates of the City (1871–1910), 1986.
Richard Lingeman , Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey (1910–1945), 1990.
Richard Lingeman