Regarded as one of Dreiser's best novels, Jennie Gerhardt is here recaptured as it was originally written, restoring it to its complete, unexpurgated form.

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time 'American writing, before and after Dreiser's time, differed almost as much as biology before and after Darwin,' said H. L. Mencken. Sister Carrie, Dreiser's great first novel, transformed the conventional 'fallen woman' story into a bold and truly innovative piece of fiction when it appeared in 1900. Naïve young Caroline Meeber, a small-town girl seduced by the lure of the modern city, becomes the mistress of a traveling salesman and then of a saloon manager, who elopes with her to New York. Both its subject matter and Dreiser's unsparing, nonjudgmental approach made Sister Carrie a controversial book in its time, and the work retains the power to shock readers today. 'Sister Carrie came to housebound and airless America like a great free Western wind, and to our stuffy domesticity gave us the first fresh air since Mark Twain and Whitman,' noted Sinclair Lewis. 'Dreiser enlarged, willy-nilly, by a kind of historical accident if you will, the range of American literature,' observed Robert Penn Warren. '[Sister Carrie] is a vivid and absorbing work of art.'

An extraordinary collection which reminds us how great a talent Dreiser was."He has no peer in the American short story....Among the moderns, there is almost no one capable of writing tales like these." -Howard Fast.

This carefully crafted ebook: "The Collected Novels of Theodore Dreiser – 7 Modern Classics" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Table of Contents: Sister Carrie Jennie Gerhardt The Financier The Titan The "Genius" An American Tragedy The Bulwark The Stoic

Set in 19th century Philadelphia and based on the life of flamboyant financier C.T. Yerkes, Dreiser's portrayal of the unscrupulous magnate Frank Cowperwood embodies the idea that behind every great fortune there is a crime. In Philly the protagonist is eventually imprisoned for embezzlement of public funds. He later leaves prison, departs for Chicago, makes another fortune, and becomes involved in still further shaddy practices. You don't read Dreiser for literary finesse, but his great intensity and keen journalistic eye give this portrait a powerful reality. The author wrote two subsequent novels based on the life of Yerkes: "The Titan" and "The Stoic." --Amazon.com.

"In 1919, having recently accepted the publishing contract of a new publisher, Dreiser proposed to publish a "book of characters" that would collect twelve biographical sketches of individuals who were major influences on Dreiser, both as a man and as a writer. The resulting narratives combine the best attributes of the character sketch, the autobiography, and the short story into miniature masterpieces of prose. The men profiled in Twelve Men are a diverse and colorful group: from Dreiser's equally famous brother, the song-writer Paul Dreiser's ("My Brother Paul"), to the entirely obscure railroad foreman Michael Burke ("The Mighty Rourke"), on whose work crew Dreiser had labored in 1903. The twelve narratives are compelling portraits of the men portrayed, but they also reveal many insights into Dreiser's own life and work."--Goodreads website.

Theodore Dreiser heavily invested himself in The Genius, an autobiographical novel first published in 1915. Thoroughly immersed in the turn-of-the-century art scene, The Genius explores the multiple conflicts between art and business, art and marriage, and between traditional and modern views of sexual morality. Despite heavy editing, The Genius was deemed so shocking that its sale was immediately prohibited by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. It was not released until 1923, and thereafter the episode confirmed Dreiser's status as a writer ahead of his time

Theodore Dreiser staked his reputation on fearless expression in his fiction, but he never was more outspoken than when writing about American politics, which he did prolifically. Although he is remembered primarily as a novelist, the majority of his twenty-seven books were nonfiction treatises. To Dreiser, everything was political. His sense for the hype and hypocrisies of politics took shape in reasoned but emphatic ruminations in his fiction and nonfiction on the hopes and disappointments of democracy, the temptations of nationalism and communism, the threat and trumpets of war, and the role of writers in resisting and advancing political ideas. Spanning a period of American history from the Progressive Era to the advent of the Cold War, this generous volume collects Dreiser's most important political writings from his journalism, broadsides, speeches, private papers, and long out-of-print nonfiction books. Touching on the Great Depression, the New Deal, and both World Wars as well as Soviet Russia and the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, these writings exemplify Dreiser's candor and his penchant for championing the defenseless and railing against corruption. Positing Dreiser as an essential public intellectual who addressed the most important issues of the first half of the twentieth century, these writings also navigate historical terrain with prescient observations on topics such as religion, civil rights, national responsibility, individual ethics, global relations, and censorship that remain particularly relevant to a contemporary audience. Editor Jude Davies provides historical commentaries that frame these selections in the context of his other writings, particularly his novels.

The specially commissioned essays collected in this volume establish new parameters for both scholarly and classroom discussion of Dreiser. This Companion provides fresh perspectives on the frequently read classics, Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, as well as on topics of perennial interest, such as Dreiser's representation of the city and his prose style. The volume investigates topics such as his representation of masculinity and femininity, and his treatment of ethnicity. It is the most comprehensive introduction to Dreiser's work available.