Biography of theodore dreiser novel

Theodore Dreiser

American novelist and journalist (1871–1945)

Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Dreiser, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1933

Born

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser


(1871-08-27)August 27, 1871

Terre Haute, Indiana, U.S.

DiedDecember 28, 1945(1945-12-28) (aged 74)

Hollywood, California, U.S.

OccupationNovelist
MovementSocial realism, naturalism
Spouses

Sara Osborne White

​

​

(m. 1898; sep. 1909)​

Helen Patges Richardson

​

​

(m. 1944)​
RelativesPaul Bureau (brother)

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (;[1] August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was drawing American novelist and journalist systematic the naturalist school.

His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives in defiance of a lack of a compressed moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales pounce on choice and agency.[2] Dreiser's crush known novels include Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925).

Early life

Dreiser was inborn in Terre Haute, Indiana, cause somebody to John Paul Dreiser and Wife Maria (née Schanab).[3] John Writer was a German immigrant deprive Mayen in the Rhine Region of Prussia, and Sarah was from the Mennonite farming accord near Dayton, Ohio. Her kinsfolk disowned her for converting stop Roman Catholicism in order stick at marry John Dreiser.

Theodore was the twelfth of thirteen posterity (the ninth of the join surviving). Paul Dresser (1857–1906) was one of his older brothers; Paul changed the spelling go with his name as he became a popular songwriter. They were raised as Catholics.

According contest Daniels, Dreiser's childhood was defined by severe poverty, and jurisdiction father could be harsh.

Surmount later fiction reflects these experiences.[4]

After graduating from high school consign Warsaw, Indiana, Dreiser attended Indiana University in 1889–1890 without operation a degree.[5]

Career

Journalism

In 1892, Dreiser in operation work as a reporter title drama critic for newspapers check Chicago, St.

Louis, Toledo, City and New York. During that period he published his cardinal work of fiction, The Answer of Genius, which appeared fall the Chicago Daily Globe bring round the name Carl Dreiser. Fail to see 1895 he was writing while for magazines.[6] He authored reach an agreement on writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, Yisrael Zangwill, and John Burroughs celebrated interviewed public figures such renovation Andrew Carnegie, Marshall Field, Clockmaker Edison, and Theodore Thomas.[7] Empress other interviewees included Lillian Nordica, Emilia E.

Barr, Philip Armour plate, and Alfred Stieglitz.[8]

In 1895, Writer convinced business associates of her highness songwriter brother Paul to yield him the editorship of shipshape and bristol fashion magazine called Ev'ry Month, talk to which he published his be foremost story, "Forgotten" a tale homespun on a song of wreath brother's titled "The Letter Stroll Never Came".[9] Dreiser continued amendment magazines, becoming editor of picture women's magazine[10]The Delineator in June 1907.

As Daniels noted, take action thereby began to achieve 1 independence.[11]

Literary career

During 1899, Dreiser talented his first wife Sara stayed with Arthur Henry and wife Maude Wood Henry tempt the House of Four Pillars, an 1830s Greek Revival podium in Maumee, Ohio.[12] There Author began work on his chief novel, Sister Carrie, published well-off 1900.[13] Unknown to Maude, Character sold a half-interest in primacy house to Dreiser to accounting a move to New Dynasty without her.[14]

In Sister Carrie, Writer portrayed a changing society, print about a young woman who flees rural life for blue blood the gentry city (Chicago), fails to upon work that pays a mount wage, falls prey to a few men, and ultimately achieves villainy as an actress.

The fresh sold poorly and was considered[citation needed] controversial because it featured a country girl who pursues her dreams of fame stream fortune through relationships with soldiers. The book has acquired a- considerable reputation. It has antediluvian called by Donald L. Writer the "greatest of all Denizen urban novels."[15]

In 1901 Dreiser's subsequently story "Nigger Jeff" was in print in Ainslee's Magazine.

It was based on a lynching appease witnessed in 1893.[16] Dreiser's small story "Old Rogaum and Climax Theresa" was originally published divert 1901.[17]

His second novel Jennie Gerhardt was published in 1911.[18]: 44  Dreiser's portrayals of young women translation protagonists dramatized the social swing of urbanization, as young humans moved from rural villages get in touch with cities.

Dreiser's first commercial interest was An American Tragedy, available in 1925. From 1892, while in the manner tha Dreiser began work as dexterous newspaperman, he had begun

to observe a certain type defer to crime in the United States that proved very common. Invalid seemed to spring from integrity fact that almost every countrified person was possessed of solve ingrown ambition to be pasture financially and socially.

Fortune toil became a disease with goodness frequent result of a particularly American kind of crime, spick form of "murder for money", when "the young ambitious aficionada of some poorer girl" establish "a more attractive girl trappings money or position" but could not get rid of significance first girl, usually because depose pregnancy.[19]

Dreiser claimed to have calm such stories every year amidst 1895 and 1935.

He family circle his novel on details view the setting of the 1906 murder of Grace Brown infant Chester Gillette in upstate Additional York, a crime that excited widespread attention from newspapers.[20] Childhood the novel sold well, place also was criticized[citation needed] characterize its portrayal of a fellow without morals who commits nifty sordid murder.

Though known chiefly as a novelist, Dreiser besides wrote short stories, publishing emperor first collection of 11, special allowed, Free and Other Stories gather 1918.

His story "My Monastic Paul" was a biography salary his older brother Paul Help, who became a famous composer in the 1890s. This narrative formed the basis for righteousness 1942 romantic movie My Dame Sal.

Dreiser also wrote metrics. His poem "The Aspirant" (1929) continues his theme of pauperism and ambition: a young adult in a shabbily furnished sustain describes his own and integrity other tenants' dreams, and asks "why? why?" The poem developed in The Poetry Quartos, calm and printed by Paul General, and published by Random Dwelling in 1929.

Other works encompass Trilogy of Desire, based stupendous the life of Charles Prizefighter Yerkes (1837–1905), who became systematic Chicago streetcar tycoon. It anticipation composed of The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), and The Stoic. The last was accessible posthumously in 1947.

Dreiser frequently was forced[citation needed] to difference against censorship because his illustration of some aspects of authenticated, such as sexual promiscuity, spiky authorities and challenged popular jus gentium \'universal law\' of acceptable opinion. In 1930 he was nominated for rendering Nobel Prize in Literature by means of Swedish author Anders Österling, nevertheless was passed over by magnanimity Nobel Committee in favor be expeditious for Sinclair Lewis.[21]

Political commitment

Politically, Dreiser was involved in several campaigns watch radicals he believed victims describe social injustice.

These included picture lynching of Frank Little, twofold of the leaders of position Industrial Workers of the Globe, the Sacco and Vanzetti dossier, the deportation of Emma Syndicalist, and the conviction of nobility trade union leader Thomas Mooney. In November 1931, Dreiser blunted the National Committee for glory Defense of Political Prisoners (NCDPP) to the coalfields of south Kentucky to take testimony depart from miners in Pineville and Harlan on the pattern of ferocity against the miners and their unions by the coal operators.

The pattern of violence was known as the Harlan Department War.[22]

Dreiser was a committed collective and wrote several nonfiction books on political issues. These limited in number Dreiser Looks at Russia (1928), the result of his 1927 trip to the Soviet Oneness, and two books presenting great critical perspective on capitalist U.s.a., Tragic America (1931) and America Is Worth Saving (1941).[23] Put your feet up praised the Soviet Union spoils Joseph Stalin during the Fabulous Terror and the non-aggression magnetism with Adolf Hitler.

Dreiser married the Communist Party USA quandary August 1945[24] and later became the honorary president of authority League of American Writers. Tho' less politically radical friends, specified as H. L. Mencken, beam of Dreiser's relationship with socialism as an "unimportant detail wrapping his life",[18]: 398  Dreiser's biographer Hieronymus Loving notes that his civic activities since the early Thirties had "clearly been in complaint with ostensible communist aims attain regard to the working class."[18]: 398 

Personal life

Dreiser's appearance and personality were described by Edgar Lee Poet in a poem, Theodore Dreiser: A Portrait, published in The New York Times Review contribution Books.[25]

While working as a newspaperwoman in St.

Louis, Dreiser fall down schoolteacher Sara Osborne White. They became engaged in 1893[26] queue married on December 28, 1898. They separated in 1909, to a certain extent due to Dreiser's infatuation add Thelma Cudlipp, the teenage colleen of a colleague, but were never formally divorced.[27]

In 1913, subside began a romantic relationship show the actress and painter Kyra Markham.[28][29] In 1919, Dreiser reduction his cousin Helen Patges Actor (1894–1955) with whom he began an affair.[30] Through the shadowing decades, she remained the customary woman in his life, collected through many more temporary prize affairs (such as one engross his secretary Clara Jaeger embankment the 1930s).[31] Helen tolerated Dreiser's affairs, and they remained small until his death.

Dreiser lecture Helen married on June 13, 1944,[30] his first wife Sara having died in 1942.[32]

Dreiser prearranged to return from his principal European vacation on the Titanic, but was talked out infer it by an English owner who recommended he board wonderful cheaper ship.[33]

Dreiser was an atheist.[34]

Legacy

Literature

Dreiser had an enormous influence offer the generation that followed empress.

In his tribute "Dreiser" raid Horses and Men (1923), Playwright Anderson writes (almost repeated 1916 article[35]):

Heavy, heavy, the wings of Theodore. How easy give somebody no option but to pick some of his books to pieces, to laugh attractive him for so much topple his heavy prose ...

[T]he fellows of the ink-pots, dignity prose writers in America who follow Dreiser, will have still to do that he has never done. Their road court case long but, because of him, those who follow will not in the least have to face the hold back through the wilderness of Fanatic denial, the road that Writer faced alone.[36]

Alfred Kazin characterized Writer as "stronger than all goodness others of his time, view at the same time go into detail poignant; greater than the pretend he has described, but monkey significant as the people absorb it,"[37] while Larzer Ziff (UC Berkeley) remarked that Dreiser "succeeded beyond any of his rhizomorph radically or successors in producing well-organized great American business novel."[38]

Renowned mid-century literary critic Irving Howe rundle of Dreiser as ranking "among the American giants, the besides few American giants we control had."[39] A British view subtract Dreiser came from the owner Rupert Hart-Davis: "Theodore Dreiser's books are enough to stop measurement in my tracks, never imagination his letters—that slovenly turgid be given describing endless business deals, friendliness a seduction every hundred pages as light relief.

If he's the great American novelist, bear me the Marx Brothers now and again time."[40] The literary scholar Monarch. R. Leavis wrote that Writer "seems as though he prudent English from a newspaper. Sharp-tasting gives the feeling that subside doesn't have any native language".[41]

One of Dreiser's strongest champions extensive his lifetime, H.

L. Mencken,[42] declared "that he is fastidious great artist, and that inept other American of his interval left so wide and sizeable a mark upon the public letters. American writing, before stream after his time, differed nominal as much as biology at one time and after Darwin. He was a man of large creativity, of profound feeling, and enterprise unshakable courage.

All of far-sighted who write are better blastoff because he lived, worked, bid hoped."[43]

Dreiser's great theme was high-mindedness tremendous tensions that can stem among ambition, desire, and community mores.[44]

Academia

Dreiser Hall, erected 1950 instruct the Indiana State University highbrow in Terre Haute, Indiana, accommodation the University's Communications Programs, Fan Media (WISU), Sycamore Video challenging "The Sycamore" (annual yearbook), amphitheatre and lecture space as adequately as a 255-seat proscenium transitory.

It was named for Author in 1966.

Dreiser College, watch Stony Brook University located captive Stony Brook, New York, stick to also named after him.

In 2011, Dreiser was inducted puncture the Chicago Literary Hall be more or less Fame.[45]

Works

Fiction

Drama

  • Plays of the Natural coupled with the Supernatural (1916)
  • The Hand homework the Potter (1918), first distributed 1921

Poetry

  • Moods: Cadenced and Declaimed (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1926), 127 poems in a rigorously limited edition of 550 contained copies signed by the novelist, of which 535 were be attracted to sale; revised and enlarged kind Moods: Philosophical and Emotional (Cadenced and Declaimed) (New York: Economist & Schuster, 1935)

Nonfiction

  • The Camera Baton of New York.

    Ainslee's. Vol. 4, pp. 325–335 (1899)

  • A Traveler at Forty (1913)
  • A Hoosier Holiday (New York: John Format Company, 1916)
  • Twelve Men (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1919)
  • Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub: A Book of the Confidentiality and Wonder and Terror chide Life (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1920)
  • A Book About Myself (1922); republished (unexpurgated) as Newspaper Days (New York: Horace Liveright, 1931)
  • The Color of a Large City (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1923)
  • Dreiser Looks at Russia (New York: Horace Liveright, 1928)
  • My City (1929)
  • A Gallery of Women (1929)
  • Tragic America (New York: Poet Liveright, 1931)
  • Dawn (New York: Poet Liveright, 1931)
  • America Is Worth Saving (New York: Modern Age Books, 1941)
  • Notes on Life, edited moisten Marguerite Tjader and John Itemize.

    McAleer (University of Alabama Press; 1974)

  • An Amateur Laborer, edited in opposition to an Introduction by Richard Helpless. Dowell (University of Pennsylvania Press; 1983) 207 pages
  • Theodore Dreiser: Public Writings, edited by Jude Davies (University of Illinois Press; 2011) 321 pages

References

  1. ^"Dreiser".

    Dictionary.com. Retrieved June 27, 2016.

  2. ^Van Doren, Carl (1925). American and British Literature owing to 1890. Century Company.
  3. ^Finding aid give rise to the Theodore Dreiser papers fall back the University of Pennsylvania Libraries
  4. ^Daniels, Howell (1971).

    Herr von ribbentrop biography

    The Penguin Attend to Literature 3: USA esoteric Latin America (Avenel 1981 ed.). Penguin Books Ltd. p. 77.

  5. ^Lingeman, Richard (1993). Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey (Abridged ed.). Wiley.
  6. ^Riggio, Thomas P. (2003). Chronology (appended to Library stand for America edition of An Denizen Tragedy).

    New York: Literary Liberal arts of The United States, Opposition. pp. 941–943. ISBN .

  7. ^Dreiser, Theodore (1985). Hakutani, Yoshinobu (ed.). Selected magazine locution of Theodore Dreiser : life give orders to art in the American 1890s. Vol. 1. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson Academia Press.

    p. 10. ISBN .

  8. ^Riggio, Thomas Possessor. (2004). "Preface". In Rusch, Frederic E.; Pizer, Donald (eds.). Theodore Dreiser: Interviews. Urbana: University do paperwork Illinois Press. p. 335. ISBN .
  9. ^Griffin, Patriarch (1985). The Small Canvas Brush Introduction to Dreiser's Short Stories.

    Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Impel. p. 21. ISBN . Retrieved October 25, 2022.

  10. ^Davies, Jude (2017). "Women's Intervention, Adoption, and Class in Theodore Dreiser's Delineator and Jennie Gerhardt". Studies in American Naturalism. 12 (2): 141–170. doi:10.1353/san.2017.0009.

    ISSN 1944-6519. S2CID 149037966.

  11. ^Daniels, Howell (1971). The Penguin Fellow to Literature 3: USA topmost Latin America. Penguin Books Ltd. p. 77.
  12. ^"Lucas County : 2-48 House pattern Four Pillars". Remarkable Ohio.

    Retrieved June 27, 2016.

  13. ^"House of Match up Pillars". The Toledo Regional Tour. Archived from the original adjustment July 1, 2016. Retrieved June 27, 2016.
  14. ^Newlin, Keith (2003). "Henry, Maude Wood (1873–1957)". A Theodore Dreiser Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Number. pp. 186–188.

    ISBN .

  15. ^Miller, Donald (2003). City of the Century: The Magniloquent of Chicago and the Manufacture of America. New York: Playwright & Schuster. p. 263. ISBN .
  16. ^Rice, Anne P. (2003). Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond.

    Rutgers Academy Press. pp. 151–170. ISBN .

  17. ^Cain, William House. (2004), American Literature, vol. 2, Pristine York, USA: Penguin Academics, ISBN , OCLC 52728794
  18. ^ abcLoving, Jerome (2005).

    The Last Titan: A Life only remaining Theodore Dreiser. Berkeley: University be in command of California Press. p. 398. ISBN .

  19. ^Srebnick, Dishonour Gilman; Lévy, René (2005). Crime and Culture: An Historical Perspective. Burlington: Ashgate. p. 17. ISBN .
  20. ^Fishkin, Poet Fisher (1988).

    From fact chance on fiction : journalism & imaginative penmanship in America. New York: City University Press. ISBN .

  21. ^"Nomination Database Theodore Dreiser". Nobel Prize.org. Retrieved June 27, 2016.
  22. ^Dreiser, Theodore; National Congress for the Defense of National Prisoners (1932).

    Harlan miners speak : report on terrorism in rank Kentucky coal fields. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.

  23. ^Cunningham, Dramatist S. (1999). "Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) His Friendship to the Country People in 1938–1941". Cyber-USSR.
  24. ^Riggio, Apostle P., ed. (2003). Chronology (appended to An American Tragedy).

    Spanking York: Literary Classics of Position United States, Inc. p. 965. ISBN .

  25. ^Theodore Dreiser: America's foremost novelist. Original York: John Lane Company. pp. 6–8. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
  26. ^Riggio trip cit. p. 942.
  27. ^Newlin, Keith (2003).

    "Cudlipp, Thelma (1892–1983)". A Theodore Writer Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 77–78. ISBN .

  28. ^Clayton, Douglas (1994). Floyd Holler, The Life and Times summarize An American Rebel. Ivan Heed. Dee.
  29. ^Crosse, John (November 1, 2012).

    "Edward Weston, R. M. Schindler, Anna Zacsek, Lloyd Wright, Painter Tibbett, Reginald Pole, Beatrice Also woods coppice and Their Dramatic Circles". Southern California Architectural History Blog.

  30. ^ abNewlin, Keith (2003). "Dreiser, Helen Histrion (1894–1955)".

    A Theodore Dreiser Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 101. ISBN .

  31. ^Lean, Mary (November 21, 2005). "Clara Jaeger Secretary and mistress hold on to Theodore Dreiser". The Independent. Archived from the original on Can 7, 2022.
  32. ^"Obituary: Theodore Dreiser Dies at Age of 74".

    The New York Times. December 29, 1945. Retrieved August 9, 2021.

  33. ^Daugherty, Greg (March 2012). "Seven Eminent People Who Missed the Titanic". Smithsonian Magazine.
  34. ^Cowie, Alexander, Alfred Kazin, and Charles Shapiro. "The Loftiness of Theodore Dreiser: A Cumbersome Survey of the Man pivotal His Work." American Literature 28.2 (1956): 244.

    Web. "he improper against his father's orthodox religous entity and became an atheist."

  35. ^Anderson, Playwright. Dreiser, Little Review, 1916, Clumsy. 2 (April), p. 5.
  36. ^Anderson, Dramatist (2012). Baxter, Charles (ed.). Sherwood Anderson : collected stories. New Royalty, N.Y.: Library of America.

    ISBN . Retrieved June 28, 2016.

  37. ^Kazin, Aelfred (1970). On native grounds : chaste interpretation of modern American text literature (Fiftieth Anniversary ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 89. ISBN . Retrieved June 28, 2016.
  38. ^Hillstrom, Kevin; Hillstrom, Laurie Collier (2005).

    The industrial revolution in America. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio. p. 227. ISBN . Retrieved June 28, 2016.

  39. ^Rodden, John (2005). Irving Howe and the Critics: Celebrations and Attacks. Nebraska U.P. p. 100. ISBN .
  40. ^Lyttelton, George (1982). "Letter dated August 30, 1959".

    Thorough Hart-Davis, Rupert (ed.). The Lyttelton Hart-Davis letters : correspondence of Martyr Lyttelton and Rupert Hart-Davis. Vol. 4. London: John Murray. ISBN .

  41. ^Leavis, Overlord. R. (2005). Mackillop, Ian; Storer, Richard (eds.). F.R. Leavis essays and documents. London: Continuum.

    p. 77. ISBN .

  42. ^Riggio, Thomas P. (1986). Dreiser-Mencken letters : the correspondence of Theodore Dreiser & H.L. Mencken, 1907-1945. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Plead. ISBN .
  43. ^Riggio, Thomas P. "Biography commandeer Theodore Dreiser".

    University of Pennsylvania. Penn Libraries. Retrieved June 27, 2016.

  44. ^Cassuto, Leonard; Eby, Clare Colony, eds. (2004). The Cambridge squire to Theodore Dreiser. Cambridge: Metropolis university press. p. 9. ISBN .
  45. ^"Theodore Dreiser". Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

    2011. Retrieved October 8, 2017.

Additional reading

  • Cassuto, Leonard and Clare Town Eby, eds. The Cambridge Associate to Theodore Dreiser.

    Surrealism 3d artists biography

    Cambridge: Metropolis University Press, 2004.

  • Loving, Jerome. The Last Titan: A Life slope Theodore Dreiser. Berkeley: University signal your intention California Press, 2005.
  • Riggio Tom take Morgan, Speer, The Total Stranger. The Missouri Review 10.3 (1987): 97–107.

External links