Dreiser, Theodore Herman Albert
Dreiser, Theodore Herman Albert ( 1871 – 1945 ),American novelist, born in Indiana, the son of a devout Catholic German immigrant father, and brought up in semi-poverty. He left his family at the age of 15 for Chicago, and after various jobs became a journalist, meanwhile writing his first novel, Sister Carrie ( 1900 ), a powerful account of a young working girl's rise to the ‘tinsel and shine’ of worldly success, and of the slow decline of her lover and protector Hurstwood. It was withheld from circulation by its publishers, who were apprehensive about Dreiser's frank and amoral treatment of Carrie's sexuality and ambition, and he continued work as a hack journalist until the greater success of Jennie Gerhardt ( 1911 ), again a novel of a working girl's betterment through liaisons. This was followed by the first parts of a trilogy about an unscrupulous business magnate, Frank Cowperwood (The...
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