• SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF STUDIES OF DREISER AND HIS WORK
• SELECTED WORKS ON DREISER’S PERIOD
• WEBSITE
• SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF STUDIES OF DREISER AND HIS WORK

BIOGRAPHIES AND COLLECTIONS OF LETTERS

Dreiser, Helen. My Life with Dreiser. Cleveland: World, 1951.

Elias, Robert H.Theodore Dreiser: Apostle of Nature. New York: Knopf, 1949; revised, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970.

Elias, ed. Letters of Theodore Dreiser, 3 volumes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959.

Lingeman, Richard. Theodore Dreiser: At the Gates of the City, 1871–1907. New York: Putnam, 1986.

Lingeman. Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey, 1908-1945. New York: Putnam, 1990.

Riggio, Thomas P., ed. Dreiser-Mencken Letters: The Correspondence of Theodore Dreiser & H.L. Mencken, 1907-1945, 2 volumes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.

Swanberg, W.A. Dreiser. New York: Scribners, 1965.

Pizer, Donald, Richard W. Dowell, and Frederic E. Rusch. Theodore Dreiser: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1975; revised as Theodore Dreiser: A Primary Bibliography and Reference Guide. Boston:G.K. Hall, 1991.

GENERAL COLLECTIONS OF CRITICISM

Gogol, Miriam, ed. Theodore Dreiser: Beyond Naturalism. New York: NewYork University Press, 1995.

Kazin, Alfred, and Charles Shapiro, eds. The Stature of Theodore Dreiser. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955.

Pizer, Donald, ed. Critical Essays on Theodore Dreiser. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1981.

Salzman, Jack, ed. Theodore Dreiser: The Critical Reception. New York: David Lewis, 1972.

GENERAL CRITICAL STUDIES:BOOKS

Eby, Clare. Dreiser and Veblen: Saboteurs of the Staus Quo. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998.

Gerber, Philip. Theodore Dreiser. New York:Twayne, 1964; revised as Theodore Dreiser Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1992.

Hussman, Lawrence E., Jr. Dreiser and His Fiction: A Twentieth-Century Quest. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.

Lehan, Richard. Theodore Dreiser: His World and His Novels. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.

Matthiessen, E.O. Theodore Dreiser. NewYork: Sloane, 1951.

Moers, Ellen. Two Dreisers. New York: Viking, 1969.

Pizer, Donald. The Novels of Theodore Dreiser: A Critical Study. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976.

Warren, Robert Penn. Homage to Theodore Dreiser. New York: Random House, 1971.

Zanine, Louis J.Mechanism and Mysticism:The Influence of Science on the Thought and Work of Theodore Dreiser. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993.

GENERAL CRITICAL STUDIES: ARTICLES AND PARTS OF BOOKS

Anderson, Sherwood. “Dreiser.” In his Horses and Men: Tales, Long and Short, from Our American Life. New York: Huebsch, 1923.

Fisher, Philip. “The Life History of Objects: The Naturalist Novel and the City.” In his Hard Facts: Setting and Form in the American Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Kazin, Alfred. “Two Educations: Edith Wharton and Theodore Dreiser.” In his On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modem American Prose Literature. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1942.

Mencken, H. L. “Theodore Dreiser.” In his A Book of Prefaces. New York: Knopf, 1917.

Sherman, Stuart. “The Barbaric Naturalism of Theodore Dreiser.” In his On Contemporary Literature. New York: Holt, 1917.

Shulman, Robert. “Dreiser and the Dynamics of American Capitalism.” In his Social Criticism and Nineteenth-Century American Fictions. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987.

Trilling, Lionel. “Reality in America.” In his The Liberal Imagination. New York:Viking, 1950.

Vivas, Eliseo. “Dreiser, An Inconsistent Naturalist.” Ethics, 48 (1938): 498–508.

Walcutt, Charles C. “Theodore Dreiser: The Wonder and Terror of Life.” In his American Literary Naturalism, A Divided Stream. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956.

STUDIES OF SPECIFIC NOVELS

Sister Carrie

Bell, Michael Davitt. “Fine Styles of Sympathy: Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie.” In his The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Bowlby, Rachel. “Starring: Dreiser’s Sister Carrie.” In her Just Looking: Consumer Culture in.Dreiser, Gissing, and Zola. New York: Methuen, 1985.

Howard, June. Form and History in American Literary Naturalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

Kaplan, Amy. “The Sentimental Revolt of Sister Carrie.” In her The Social Construction of American Realism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Markels, Julian. “Dreiser and the Plotting of Inarticulate Experience.” Massachusetts Review, 2(1961):431-448.

Pizer, Donald. “The Problem of American Literary Naturalism and Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie.” American Literary Realism, 32(1999): 1-11.

Pizer, ed. New Essays on Sister Carrie. NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Sloane, David E. E. Sister Carrie: Theodore Dreiser’s Sociological Tragedy. NewYork: Twayne, 1992.

West, James L. W, III. A Sister Carrie Portfolio. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985.

Jennie Gerhardt

Wadlington, Warwick.“Pathos and Dreiser.” Southern Review, 7 (1971): 411-429.

West, James L. W.III, ed. Dreiser’s Jennie Gerhardt: New Essays on the Restored Text. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.

The Cowperwood Trilogy

Conder, John. “Dreiser’s Trilogy and the Dilemma of Determinism.” In his Naturalism in American Fiction:The Classic Phase. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1984.

Gerber, Philip. “The Financier Himself: Dreiser and C. T. Yerkes.” Publications of the Modem Language Association, 88(1973): 112-121.

An American Tragedy

Bloom, Harold, ed. Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. New York: Chelsea House, 1988.

Howe, Irving. “Dreiser: The Springs of Desire.” In his Decline of the New. NewYork: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970.

Michaels, Walter Benn. “On An American Tragedy: Or the Promise of American Life.” Representations, 25 (1989): 71-98.

Mitchell, Lee Clark. “The Psychopoetics of Desire in Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.” In his Determined Fictions: American Literary Naturalism. New York:Columbia University Press, 1989.

Orlov, Paul A. An American Tragedy: Perils of the Self Seeking “Success.” Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1998.

SELECTED WORKS ON DREISER’S PERIOD

LATE-NINETEENTH-AND EARLY-TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERARY HISTORY

Aaron, Daniel. Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961.

Ahnebrink, Lars. The Beginnings of Natural ism in American Fiction: A Study of the Works of Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, and Frank Norris, with Special Reference to Some European Influences, 1891-1903. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950.

Berthoff, Warner. The Ferment of Realism: American Literature, 1884-1919. NewYork:Free Press, 1965.

Campbell, Donna M. Resisting Regionalism:Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885-1915. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997.

Den Tandt, Christophe. The Urban Sublime in American Literary Naturalism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.

Kazin, Alfred. On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1942.

Martin, Jay. Harvests of Change: American Literature, 1865-1914. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967.

Martin, Ronald E. American Literature and the Universe of Force. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1981.

Michaels, Walter Benn. The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism: American Literature at the Turn of the Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Parrington, Vernon Lewis. The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America, 1860-1920. Volume 3 of Main Currents in American Thought. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1930.

Pizer, Donald. The Theory and Practice of American Literary Naturalism: Selected Essays and Reviews. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993.

Pizer, ed. The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: Howells to London. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Pizer and Earl Harbert, eds. American Realists and Naturalists. Detroit: Gale, 1982.

Sundquist, Eric J., ed. American Realism:New Essays. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.

Wilson, Christopher. The Labor of Words:Literary Professionalism in the Progressive Era. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985.

Ziff, Larzer. The American 1890s. New York: Viking, 1966.

AMERICAN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY, 1865-1945

Corkin, Stanley. Realism and the Birth of the Modern United States: Cinema, Literature, and Culture. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996.

Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944; revised, Boston: Beacon, 1955.

Jones, Howard Mumford. The Age of Energy: Variations of American Experience, 1865-1915. New York: Viking, 1971.

Lehan, Richard. The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History. NewYork:Oxford University Press, 1998.

Orvell, Miles. The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

Shi, David. Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. Oxford University Press, 1985.

Strychacz, Thomas F. Modernism, Mass Culture, and Professionalism. New York:Columbia University Press, 1993.

Trachtenberg, Alan. The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age. New York: Hill & Wang, 1982.

WEBSITE

The International Theodore Dreiser Society.

The site contains information about society activities and matters of interest to those engaged in the study of Dreiser’s life, work, and times. Of special importance is the account of Dreiser Studies, the society’s journal; announcements of forthcoming meetings; and descriptions of important repositories of Dreiser material.

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

The principal archive of Dreiser’s manuscripts is the Theodore Dreiser Papers at the University of Pennsylvania Library. The collection was formed by gifts from Dreiser before his death and by Helen Dreiser after his death. It consists of drafts of almost all of Dreiser’s published work, much unpublished material, his personal library, letters received by him throughout his life and carbons of letters by him, and much miscellaneous material. A description of the collection can be found online.

Additional major Dreiser collections are at The Lilly Library of Indiana University, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library.