Theodore Dreiser (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991)
At a glance:
- Author: Richard Lingeman
- First Published: 1990
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: 1908-1945
- Setting: New York and California
- Principal Characters: Theodore Dreiser, Sara (Jugs) Dreiser, Helen Dreiser, H. L. Mencken, Marguerite Harris, Horace Liveright, Kiram Markham, Grant Richards
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, History, Biography
- Subjects: Communism or communists, Sex or sexuality, Literature, Individuality, Novelists, Adultery, Spiritualism, Idealism, Materialism
- Locales: California, New York
In the second volume of his magnificent biography of Theodore Dreiser, Richard Lingeman picks up at that point in his subject’s life when he was contemplating a return to fiction. After the fierce reception of Sister Carrie (1900), a ground-breaking novel that was attacked for its emphasis on the place of sexuality in American society, Dreiser was reluctant to write more fiction. Although his novel had been hailed by his fellow writers, many of whom treated him as a towering new figure in American literature, he had suffered greatly from his publisher’s suppression of...
[The entire page is 2015 words long]
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