Existing comment:
Theodore Dreiser, 1871-1945
When the young journalist Theodore Dreiser published his first novel, Sister Carrie, in 1900, even his publisher was shocked, and the book was virtually banned. Nevertheless, this tale of compromised virtue within a harsh urban environment would ultimately be regarded as a watershed move toward greater frankness in American fiction. Dreiser continued to probe the unvarnished realities of urban life in such works from the 1910s as Jennie Gerhardt, The Titan, and The Genius. But it was not until the appearance of An American Tragedy in 1925 that Dreiser finally received serious attention as one of the most significant realists in American literary history. Nonetheless Dreiser, a lifelong advocate of freedom of expression, battled censorship his whole career. Henry Varnum Poor made this portrait at the time the contentious author had begun to get involved in the politics of radical protest.
Henry Varnum Poor, 1933 |