Theodore Dreiser was one of the great American writers, and a
transitional figure between Victorian America and the "modern" age that
was inaugurated after the cessation of hostilities after WWI and the
publication of Sinclair Lewis' "Main
Street" in 1920. A naturalist with a committed social conscience
(Dreiser was a socialist in a time when socialists were an established
third party and had many mayoral posts and seats in state legislatures
before the post-WWI "Red Scare" wiped out socialism in the U.S.),
Theodore Dreiser is a seminal figure in the evolution of American
letters to a more mature literature.
Born on August 27, 1871 in Terre Haute, Indiana, he was the twelfth of
thirteen children Born to John Paul & Sarah Dreiser, ten of whom
survived infancy. Theordore's Dreiser's father, John, was a German
immigrant and a strict Baptist. His mother Sarah came from a Mennonite
community who later converted to Roman Catholicism. His older brother
Paul Dresser became a famous songwriter.
Theodore Dreiser attended Indiana University from 1889 to 1890, but
flunked out and became a journalist in Chicago and St. Louis. He
married the former Sara White in 1898, but the marriage failed and they
separated in 1909. Dreiser never divorced his wife.
His first novel "Sister Carrie" was published in 1900. It is considered
a classic and a seminal piece of American literature. The publisher did
not promote the novel, likely due to its controversial subject matter
(adultery, extramarital sex), and the book sold poorly. He did not
score a best-seller for a quarter-of-century, until "An American
Tragedy" in 1925. (The novel was made into
George Stevens 1951 masterpiece
Ein Platz an der Sonne (1951).
Theodore Dreiser died on December 28, 1945, not long after he had
joined the Communist Party, a move that
Ernest Hemingway said was that of an
old man trying to save his soul.
