Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Hermann Albert Dreiser (August 17th 1871, High Ground, Indiana, the United States - December 28th 1945, Hollywood, California, the United States) is a American writer naturalist.

Biography

Wire of a German immigrant and a mother raised in the community mennonite, Theodore Dreiser was it twelfth of a phratry of thirteen children. The chansonnier Paul Dresser (1859-1906) was his older brother. After a short passage to the University of Indiana, it started to write for the Chicago Globe then for the St Louis Earth-Democrat . He married Sara White in 1898. They separated definitively in 1909, without formally divorcing.

Its first novel, Sister Carrie (1900), tells the history of a woman who flees the rural life to join the town of Chicago where it begins a difficult existence. The editor having hardly ensured the promotion of the book, it was sold only few specimens of it. Dreiser worked then in the edition of female magazines until it must give up it in 1910, following an adventure. It published its second novel, Jennie Gerhardt , the following year. Like the majority of its posterior works, this one treated social inequalities. In 1918, it published a collection of nine news, Free and Other Stories . An American Tragedy was, in 1925, its first business success. It was adapted to the cinema in 1931 and, again, 1951. Other novels followed whose last, The Stoic , was published in posthumous title in 1947. Its influence on the following literary generation was important.

Dreiser was implied in several campaigns against the social injustices. He denounced in particular the lynching of the trade unionist IWW Frank Little, the judgment of Sacco and Vanzetti or that of Tom Mooney, the expulsion of Emma Goldman, etc engaged Socialiste, he wrote several political tests. Dreiser Looks At Russia (1928), was inspired to him by its voyage the previous year in Soviet Union. He denounced also capitalism and American militarism, which was worth the hostility of the official circles to him.

Works

  • Sister Carrie (1900)
  • Jennie Gerhardt (1911)
  • the Financier (1912)
  • Titan (1914)
  • an American Tragedy (1925)

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