Considered by many as the leader of Naturalism in American writing, Dreiser is also remembered for his stinging criticism of the genteel tradition and of what Howells described as the "smiling aspects of life" typifying America. In his fiction, Dreiser deals with social problems and with characters who struggle to survive. His sympathetic treatment of a "morally loose" woman in Sister Carrie was called immoral and he suffered at the hands of publishers. One of Dreiser's favorite fictional devices was the use of contrast between the rich and the poor, the urbane and the unsophisticated, and the power brokers and the helpless. While he wrote about "raw" experiences of life in his earlier works, in his later writing he considered the impact of economic society on the lives of people in the remarkable trilogy - The Financier, The Titan, and The Stoic. His best known work is An American Tragedy which shows a young man trying to succeed in a materialistic society.

Primary Works

Sister Carrie, 1900; Jennie Gerhardt, 1911; The Financier, 1912; A Traveler at Forty, 1913; The Titan, 1914; The Genius. 1915; A Hoosier Holiday, 1916; Free and Other Stories, 1918; Twelve Men, 1919; A Book About Myself, 1922; The Color of a Great City, 1923; An American Tragedy, 1925; Moods, 1926; "Typhoon," (short story), 1926, Chains, 1927; Dreiser Looks at Russia, 1928; A Gallery of Women, 1929; Dawn, 1931; The Bulwark, 1946; The Stoic, 1947.

Dreiser, Theodore. A Book about Myself. London: Constable, 1929. PS3507.R55 Z5

Theodore Dresier: Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, Twelve Men. Ed. Richard Lehan. NY: The Library of America, 1987.

The Collected Plays of Theodore Dreiser. Newlin, Keith. ed. Albany, NY: Whitston, 2000.

The Genius. Eby, Clare V. (ed. and introd.) Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2008.

Theodore Dresier: A Picture and a Criticism of Life: New Letters, Volume I. Pizer, Donald (ed. and introd.) Champaig: U of Illinois P, 2008.

Letters to Women: New Letters, Volume II. Riggio, Thomas P. ed. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2009.

The Financier. Mulligan, Roark. ed. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2010.

Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy: A Documentary Volume. Pizer, Donald. ed. Detroit, MI: Gale, 2011.

TopSelected Bibliography 2000-Present

Bender, Bert. Evolution and "the Sex Problem": American Narratives during the Eclipse of Darwinism. Kent: Kent State UP, 2004.

Brennan, Stephen C. ed. Theodore Dreiser: A Documentary Volume. Detroit, MI: Gale, 2012.

Cotsell, Michael. The Theater of Trauma: American Modernist Drama and the Psychological Struggle for the American Mind, 1900-1930. NY: Peter Lang, 2005.

Davies, Jude. ed. Theodore Dreiser: Political Writings. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2011.

Dore, Florence. The Novel and the Obscene: Sexual Subjects in American Modernism. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2005.

Hricko, Mary. The Genesis of the Chicago Renaissance: Theodore Dreiser, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and James T. Farrell. NY: Routledge, 2009.

Koloze, Jeff, and Anne B. Gardiner. An Ethical Analysis of the Portrayal of Abortion in American Fiction: Dreiser, Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Passos, Brautigan, and Irving. Lewiston: Mellen, 2005.

Lewis, Charles R. A Coincidence of Wants: The Novel and Neoclassical Economics. NY: Garland, 2000.

Loving, Jerome. The Last Titan: A Life of Theodore Dreiser. Berkeley: U of California P, 2005.

Murphy, Jillmarie. Monstrous Kinships: Realism and Attachment Theory in the Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Novel. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2011.

Newlin, Keith. ed. The Collected Plays of Theodore Dreiser. Albany, NY: Whitston, 2000.

Pizer, Donald. American Naturalism and the Jews: Garland, Norris, Dreiser, Wharton, and Cather. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2008.

- - -. American Naturalism and the Jews: Garland, Norris, Dreiser, Wharton, and Cather. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2008.

Pizer, Donald. ed. Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy: A Documentary Volume. Detroit, MI: Gale, 2011.

Riggio, Thomas P. notes. An American Tragedy. NY: Library of America, 2003.

MLA Style Citation of this Web Page

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 6: Late Nineteenth Century - Theodore Dreiser." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL: http://www.paulreuben.website/pal/chap6/dreiser.html (provide page date or date of your login). 

| Top |