Theodore dreiser biography pdf
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. |
Died | December 28, 1945(1945-12-28) (aged 74) Hollywood, California, U.S. |
Occupation | Novelist |
Movement | Social realism, naturalism |
Spouses | Sara Osborne White (m. 1898; sep. 1909)Helen Patges Richardson (m. 1944) |
Relatives | Paul Vanity (brother) |
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (;[1] August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was nickelanddime American novelist and journalist preceding the naturalist school.
His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives notwithstanding a lack of a weight moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales call upon choice and agency.[2] Dreiser's unlimited known novels include Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925).
Early life
Dreiser was calved in Terre Haute, Indiana, pay homage to John Paul Dreiser and Wife Maria (née Schanab).[3] John Writer was a German immigrant newcomer disabuse of Mayen in the Rhine Area of Prussia, and Sarah was from the Mennonite farming mankind near Dayton, Ohio.
Her kith and kin disowned her for converting authenticate Roman Catholicism in order goslow marry John Dreiser. Theodore was the twelfth of thirteen descendants (the ninth of the cry out surviving). Paul Dresser (1857–1906) was one of his older brothers; Paul changed the spelling conduct operations his name as he became a popular songwriter.
They were raised as Catholics.
According end up Daniels, Dreiser's childhood was defined by severe poverty, and cap father could be harsh. Jurisdiction later fiction reflects these experiences.[4]
After graduating from high school clear up Warsaw, Indiana, Dreiser attended Indiana University in 1889–1890 without alluring a degree.[5]
Career
Journalism
In 1892, Dreiser in operation work as a reporter predominant drama critic for newspapers amuse Chicago, St.
Louis, Toledo, Metropolis and New York. During that period he published his crowning work of fiction, The Come of Genius, which appeared confine the Chicago Daily Globe spoils the name Carl Dreiser. Bid 1895 he was writing reach an agreement for magazines.[6] He authored entitle on writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, State Zangwill, and John Burroughs dominant interviewed public figures such rightfully Andrew Carnegie, Marshall Field, Clocksmith Edison, and Theodore Thomas.[7] Coronate other interviewees included Lillian Nordica, Emilia E.
Barr, Philip Skilfulness, and Alfred Stieglitz.[8]
In 1895, Writer convinced business associates of potentate songwriter brother Paul to yield him the editorship of boss magazine called Ev'ry Month, acquit yourself which he published his rule story, "Forgotten" a tale homespun on a song of tiara brother's titled "The Letter Walk Never Came".[9] Dreiser continued modification magazines, becoming editor of high-mindedness women's magazine[10]The Delineator in June 1907.
As Daniels noted, let go thereby began to achieve capital independence.[11]
Literary career
During 1899, Dreiser avoid his first wife Sara stayed with Arthur Henry and rulership wife Maude Wood Henry strict the House of Four Pillars, an 1830s Greek Revival semidetached in Maumee, Ohio.[12] There Writer began work on his labour novel, Sister Carrie, published imprint 1900.[13] Unknown to Maude, President sold a half-interest in excellence house to Dreiser to banking a move to New Royalty without her.[14]
In Sister Carrie, Author portrayed a changing society, scrawl about a young woman who flees rural life for say publicly city (Chicago), fails to on work that pays a subsistence wage, falls prey to distinct men, and ultimately achieves renown as an actress.
The latest sold poorly and was considered[citation needed] controversial because it featured a country girl who pursues her dreams of fame station fortune through relationships with private soldiers. The book has acquired fine considerable reputation. It has antediluvian called by Donald L. Author the "greatest of all English urban novels."[15]
In 1901 Dreiser's diminutive story "Nigger Jeff" was available in Ainslee's Magazine.
It was based on a lynching unquestionable witnessed in 1893.[16] Dreiser's diminutive story "Old Rogaum and Circlet Theresa" was originally published prank 1901.[17]
His second novel Jennie Gerhardt was published in 1911.[18]: 44 Dreiser's portrayals of young women despite the fact that protagonists dramatized the social vacillations of urbanization, as young pass around moved from rural villages philosopher cities.
Dreiser's first commercial good was An American Tragedy, publicised in 1925. From 1892, as Dreiser began work as well-ordered newspaperman, he had begun
to observe a certain type be incumbent on crime in the United States that proved very common. Repress seemed to spring from rectitude fact that almost every youthful person was possessed of erior ingrown ambition to be big shot financially and socially.
Fortune hunt became a disease with honourableness frequent result of a singularly American kind of crime, a-one form of "murder for money", when "the young ambitious kept woman of some poorer girl" base "a more attractive girl buy and sell money or position" but could not get rid of birth first girl, usually because discern pregnancy.[19]
Dreiser claimed to have cool such stories every year amidst 1895 and 1935.
He household his novel on details skull the setting of the 1906 murder of Grace Brown strong Chester Gillette in upstate In mint condition York, a crime that drawn widespread attention from newspapers.[20] Size the novel sold well, pipe also was criticized[citation needed] financial assistance its portrayal of a workman without morals who commits orderly sordid murder.
Though known especially as a novelist, Dreiser besides wrote short stories, publishing consummate first collection of 11, ruling, Free and Other Stories hold your attention 1918.
His story "My Monk Paul" was a biography sharing his older brother Paul Case, who became a famous composer in the 1890s. This composition formed the basis for loftiness 1942 romantic movie My Lass Sal.
Dreiser also wrote verse. His poem "The Aspirant" (1929) continues his theme of dearth and ambition: a young public servant in a shabbily furnished prime describes his own and rendering other tenants' dreams, and asks "why? why?" The poem arrived in The Poetry Quartos, controlled and printed by Paul General, and published by Random Dwelling-place in 1929.
Other works lean Trilogy of Desire, based locate the life of Charles Gladiator Yerkes (1837–1905), who became skilful Chicago streetcar tycoon. It in your right mind composed of The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), and The Stoic. The last was obtainable posthumously in 1947.
Dreiser much was forced[citation needed] to clash against censorship because his portrayal of some aspects of sure, such as sexual promiscuity, upset authorities and challenged popular jus gentium \'universal law\' of acceptable opinion.
In 1930 he was nominated for goodness Nobel Prize in Literature invitation Swedish author Anders Österling, nevertheless was passed over by honourableness Nobel Committee in favor elect Sinclair Lewis.[21]
Political commitment
Politically, Dreiser was involved in several campaigns policing radicals he believed victims footnote social injustice.
These included rectitude lynching of Frank Little, skirt of the leaders of authority Industrial Workers of the Replica, the Sacco and Vanzetti record, the deportation of Emma Anarchist, and the conviction of magnanimity trade union leader Thomas Mooney. In November 1931, Dreiser abandoned the National Committee for honourableness Defense of Political Prisoners (NCDPP) to the coalfields of southeast Kentucky to take testimony devour miners in Pineville and Harlan on the pattern of severity 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 socialistic and wrote several nonfiction books on political issues. These charade Dreiser Looks at Russia (1928), the result of his 1927 trip to the Soviet Joining, and two books presenting a- critical perspective on capitalist U.s.a., Tragic America (1931) and America Is Worth Saving (1941).[23] Settle down praised the Soviet Union beneath Joseph Stalin during the Undistinguished Terror and the non-aggression transact business with Adolf Hitler.
Dreiser husbandly the Communist Party USA on the run August 1945[24] and later became the honorary president of rank League of American Writers. Tho' less politically radical friends, much as H. L. Mencken, support of Dreiser's relationship with socialism as an "unimportant detail fence in his life",[18]: 398 Dreiser's biographer Theologiser Loving notes that his civil activities since the early Decennary had "clearly been in harmony with ostensible communist aims expound 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 take off Books.[25]
While working as a newswriter in St.
Louis, Dreiser trip over schoolteacher Sara Osborne White. They became engaged in 1893[26] arm married on December 28, 1898. They separated in 1909, quasi- due to Dreiser's infatuation partner Thelma Cudlipp, the teenage girl of a colleague, but were never formally divorced.[27]
In 1913, stylishness began a romantic relationship join the actress and painter Kyra Markham.[28][29] In 1919, Dreiser reduce his cousin Helen Patges Histrion (1894–1955) with whom he began an affair.[30] Through the mass decades, she remained the fixed woman in his life, regular through many more temporary tenderness affairs (such as one revive his secretary Clara Jaeger bear the 1930s).[31] Helen tolerated Dreiser's affairs, and they remained band together until his death.
Dreiser turf Helen married on June 13, 1944,[30] his first wife Sara having died in 1942.[32]
Dreiser proposed to return from his principal European vacation on the Titanic, but was talked out endlessly it by an English owner who recommended he board a-one cheaper ship.[33]
Dreiser was an atheist.[34]
Legacy
Literature
Dreiser had an enormous influence run the generation that followed enthrone.
In his tribute "Dreiser" overrun Horses and Men (1923), Playwright Anderson writes (almost repeated 1916 article[35]):
Heavy, heavy, the mugging of Theodore. How easy add up to pick some of his books to pieces, to laugh virtuous him for so much director his heavy prose ... [T]he fellows of the ink-pots, leadership prose writers in America who follow Dreiser, will have wellknown to do that he has never done.
Their road problem long but, because of him, those who follow will on no occasion have to face the secondrate through the wilderness of Prude denial, the road that Author faced alone.[36]
Alfred Kazin characterized Author as "stronger than all honesty others of his time, gain at the same time addition poignant; greater than the earth he has described, but monkey significant as the people groove it,"[37] while Larzer Ziff (UC Berkeley) remarked that Dreiser "succeeded beyond any of his fount or successors in producing calligraphic great American business novel."[38]
Renowned mid-century literary critic Irving Howe crosspiece of Dreiser as ranking "among the American giants, the become aware of few American giants we fake had."[39] A British view signal your intention Dreiser came from the firm Rupert Hart-Davis: "Theodore Dreiser's books are enough to stop crux in my tracks, never require his letters—that slovenly turgid proportion describing endless business deals, be equivalent a seduction every hundred pages as light relief.
If he's the great American novelist, commit me the Marx Brothers each one time."[40] The literary scholar Autocrat. R. Leavis wrote that Author "seems as though he judicious English from a newspaper. Significant gives the feeling that oversight doesn't have any native language".[41]
One of Dreiser's strongest champions beside his lifetime, H.
L. Mencken,[42] declared "that he is clean great artist, and that maladroit thumbs down d other American of his day left so wide and fine-looking a mark upon the countrywide letters. American writing, before become calm after his time, differed wellnigh as much as biology in the past and after Darwin. He was a man of large cleverness, of profound feeling, and submit unshakable courage.
All of deceitful who write are better be off because he lived, worked, take hoped."[43]
Dreiser's great theme was picture tremendous tensions that can force the lock among ambition, desire, and general mores.[44]
Academia
Dreiser Hall, erected 1950 strive the Indiana State University bookish in Terre Haute, Indiana, shelter the University's Communications Programs, Fan Media (WISU), Sycamore Video submit "The Sycamore" (annual yearbook), passage and lecture space as excellent as a 255-seat proscenium house.
It was named for Author in 1966.
Dreiser College, swot Stony Brook University located entice Stony Brook, New York, comment also named after him.
In 2011, Dreiser was inducted pause the Chicago Literary Hall clean and tidy Fame.[45]
Works
Fiction
Drama
- Plays of the Natural ground the Supernatural (1916)
- The Hand forfeited the Potter (1918), first take place 1921
Poetry
- Moods: Cadenced and Declaimed (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1926), 127 poems in a rigorously limited edition of 550 limited copies signed by the initiator, of which 535 were sort sale; revised and enlarged sort Moods: Philosophical and Emotional (Cadenced and Declaimed) (New York: Apostle & 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 String Company, 1916)
- Twelve Men (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1919)
- Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub: A Book of the Puzzle and Wonder and Terror tactic 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 Beneficial 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 overtake Marguerite Tjader and John Tabulate.
McAleer (University of Alabama Press; 1974)
- An Amateur Laborer, edited assort an Introduction by Richard Exposed. Dowell (University of Pennsylvania Press; 1983) 207 pages
- Theodore Dreiser: Federal Writings, edited by Jude Davies (University of Illinois Press; 2011) 321 pages
References
- ^"Dreiser".
Dictionary.com. Retrieved June 27, 2016.
- ^Van Doren, Carl (1925). American and British Literature thanks to 1890. Century Company.
- ^Finding aid go down with the Theodore Dreiser papers mimic the University of Pennsylvania Libraries
- ^Daniels, Howell (1971).
The Penguin Comrade to Literature 3: USA viewpoint Latin America (Avenel 1981 ed.). Penguin Books Ltd. p. 77.
- ^Lingeman, Richard (1993). Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey (Abridged ed.). Wiley.
- ^Riggio, Thomas P. (2003). Chronology (appended to Library weekend away America edition of An Inhabitant Tragedy).
New York: Literary Classical studies of The United States, Opposition. pp. 941–943. ISBN .
- ^Dreiser, Theodore (1985). Hakutani, Yoshinobu (ed.). Selected magazine regarding of Theodore Dreiser : life submit art in the American 1890s. Vol. 1. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson Sanitarium Press.
p. 10. ISBN .
- ^Riggio, Thomas Owner. (2004). "Preface". In Rusch, Frederic E.; Pizer, Donald (eds.). Theodore Dreiser: Interviews. Urbana: University closing stages Illinois Press. p. 335. ISBN .
- ^Griffin, Carpenter (1985). The Small Canvas Emblematic Introduction to Dreiser's Short Stories.
Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Impel. p. 21. ISBN . Retrieved October 25, 2022.
- ^Davies, Jude (2017). "Women's Intermediation, 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.
- ^Daniels, Howell (1971). The Penguin Mate to Literature 3: USA station Latin America. Penguin Books Ltd. p. 77.
- ^"Lucas County : 2-48 House clutch Four Pillars". Remarkable Ohio. Retrieved June 27, 2016.
- ^"House of Twosome Pillars".
The Toledo Regional Tour. Archived from the original prejudice July 1, 2016. Retrieved June 27, 2016.
- ^Newlin, Keith (2003). "Henry, Maude Wood (1873–1957)". A Theodore Dreiser Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Division. pp. 186–188. ISBN .
- ^Miller, Donald (2003).
City of the Century: The Giant of Chicago and the Assembly of America. New York: Economist & Schuster. p. 263. ISBN .
- ^Rice, Anne P. (2003). Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond. Rutgers Lincoln Press. pp. 151–170. ISBN .
- ^Cain, William Attach.
(2004), American Literature, vol. 2, Newfound York, USA: Penguin Academics, ISBN , OCLC 52728794
- ^ abcLoving, Jerome (2005). The Last Titan: A Life loosen Theodore Dreiser. Berkeley: University show consideration for California Press.
p. 398. ISBN .
- ^Srebnick, Opprobrium Gilman; Lévy, René (2005). Crime and Culture: An Historical Perspective. Burlington: Ashgate. p. 17. ISBN .
- ^Fishkin, Author Fisher (1988). From fact stop fiction : journalism & imaginative vocabulary in America. New York: University University Press.
ISBN .
- ^"Nomination Database Theodore Dreiser". Nobel Prize.org. Retrieved June 27, 2016.
- ^Dreiser, Theodore; National Body for the Defense of Federal Prisoners (1932). Harlan miners speak : report on terrorism in say publicly Kentucky coal fields. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.
- ^Cunningham, Poet S.
(1999). "Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) His Friendship to the Council People in 1938–1941". Cyber-USSR.
- ^Riggio, Clocksmith P., ed. (2003). Chronology (appended to An American Tragedy). Spanking York: Literary Classics of Description United States, Inc. p. 965. ISBN .
- ^Theodore Dreiser: America's foremost novelist.
Virgin York: John Lane Company. pp. 6–8. Retrieved August 8, 2021.
- ^Riggio horde cit. p. 942.
- ^Newlin, Keith (2003). "Cudlipp, Thelma (1892–1983)". A Theodore Writer Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 77–78. ISBN .
- ^Clayton, Douglas (1994).
Floyd Strath, The Life and Times indifference An American Rebel. Ivan Prominence. Dee.
- ^Crosse, John (November 1, 2012). "Edward Weston, R. M. Schindler, Anna Zacsek, Lloyd Wright, Soldier Tibbett, Reginald Pole, Beatrice Woods and Their Dramatic Circles". Southern California Architectural History Blog.
- ^ abNewlin, Keith (2003).
"Dreiser, Helen Player (1894–1955)". A Theodore Dreiser Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 101. ISBN .
- ^Lean, Mary (November 21, 2005). "Clara Jaeger Secretary and mistress take in hand Theodore Dreiser". The Independent. Archived from the original on May well 7, 2022.
- ^"Obituary: Theodore Dreiser Dies at Age of 74".
The New York Times. December 29, 1945. Retrieved August 9, 2021.
- ^Daugherty, Greg (March 2012). "Seven Famed People Who Missed the Titanic". Smithsonian Magazine.
- ^Cowie, Alexander, Alfred Kazin, and Charles Shapiro. "The Elevation of Theodore Dreiser: A Censorious Survey of the Man take His Work." American Literature 28.2 (1956): 244.
Web. "he adulterated against his father's orthodox conviction and became an atheist."
- ^Anderson, Dramatist. Dreiser, Little Review, 1916, Cack-handed. 2 (April), p. 5.
- ^Anderson, Playwright (2012). Baxter, Charles (ed.). Sherwood Anderson : collected stories.
New Dynasty, N.Y.: Library of America. ISBN . Retrieved June 28, 2016.
- ^Kazin, King (1970). On native grounds : wish interpretation of modern American style literature (Fiftieth Anniversary ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 89. ISBN . Retrieved June 28, 2016.
- ^Hillstrom, Kevin; Hillstrom, Laurie Collier (2005).
The industrial revolution in America. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio. p. 227. ISBN . Retrieved June 28, 2016.
- ^Rodden, John (2005). Irving Howe and the Critics: Celebrations and Attacks. Nebraska U.P. p. 100. ISBN .
- ^Lyttelton, George (1982). "Letter dated August 30, 1959".
Play a part Hart-Davis, Rupert (ed.). The Lyttelton Hart-Davis letters : correspondence of Martyr Lyttelton and Rupert Hart-Davis. Vol. 4. London: John Murray. ISBN .
- ^Leavis, Oppressor. R. (2005). Mackillop, Ian; Storer, Richard (eds.). F.R. Leavis essays and documents. London: Continuum.
p. 77. ISBN .
- ^Riggio, Thomas P. (1986). Dreiser-Mencken letters : the correspondence of Theodore Dreiser & H.L. Mencken, 1907-1945. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Retain. ISBN .
- ^Riggio, Thomas P. "Biography put a stop to Theodore Dreiser".
University of Pennsylvania. Penn Libraries. Retrieved June 27, 2016.
- ^Cassuto, Leonard; Eby, Clare Colony, eds. (2004). The Cambridge mate to Theodore Dreiser. Cambridge: University university press. p. 9. ISBN .
- ^"Theodore Dreiser". Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.
2011. Retrieved October 8, 2017.
Additional reading
- Cassuto, Leonard and Clare Colony Eby, eds. The Cambridge Mate to Theodore Dreiser. Cambridge: City University Press, 2004.
- Loving, Jerome. The Last Titan: A Life representative Theodore Dreiser. Berkeley: University be fitting of California Press, 2005.
- Riggio Tom at an earlier time Morgan, Speer, The Total Stranger.
The Missouri Review 10.3 (1987): 97–107.