No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Critical Recognition of Sister Carrie 1900–1907
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Extract
In his introductory essay to The Stature of Theodore Dreiser, Alfred Kazin has noted that the legend that Sister Carrie had been suppressed by the publisher's wife became so dear to the hearts of the rising generation of the twentieth century that ‘Mrs Doubleday became a classic character, the Carrie Nation of the American liberal epos, her ax forever lifted against “the truth of American life”’. Equally dear to the hearts of the new generation of Americans was the belief that both the puritanical publishers and the equally puritanical reviewers tried to prevent the ‘immoral’ Sister Carrie from coming before the American public. That this belief is still widely held is testified to by the recent studies of Philip L. Gerber, W. A. Swanberg, and Yoshinobu Hakutani.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969
References
page 123 note 1 The Stature of Theodore Dreiser, ed. Kazin, Alfred and Shapiro, Charles (Bloomington, 1955), p. 7Google Scholar.
page 123 note 2 Gerber, Philip L., Theodore Dreiser (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; Swanberg, W. A., Dreiser (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; Hakutani, Yoshinobu, ‘Sister Carrie and the problem of literary naturalism’, Twentieth Century Literature, 13 (04, 1967), 3–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
page 123 note 3 Salzman, Jack, ‘The publication of Sister Carrie: fact and fiction’, The Library Chronicle of the University of Pennsylvania, 33, (spring, 1967), 119–33Google Scholar.
page 123 note 4 ‘The early adventures of Sister Carrie’, The Colophon, pt. v (New York, 1931), n.pGoogle Scholar.
page 124 note 1 New York University, 1950.
page 124 note 2 Books and Battles: American Literature, 1920–1930 (Boston, 1937), p. 252Google Scholar.
page 124 note 3 The New American Literature: A Survey (New York, 1930), p. 187Google Scholar.
page 125 note 1 The Indianapolis News, 9 March 1901. This review, as well as many that follow, is in Dreiser's personal scrapbook, which is in the Dreiser Collection at the University of Pennsylvania. Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, dates of reviews will be included in the body of the text.
page 125 note 2 Van Westrum, A. Schade, ‘The decadence of realism’, Book Buyer, 22 (03 1901), 137Google Scholar
page 127 note 1 Walcutt, Charles Child, ‘Theodore Dreiser’, The Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature, ed. Herzberg, Max J. (New York, 1962), p. 285Google Scholar.
page 128 note 1 The letter is in the Dreiser Collection at the University of Pennsylvania.
page 128 note 2 Publisher's foreword to Sister Carrie (London, 1901), p. iiGoogle Scholar.
page 128 note 3 Dreiser Collection, University of Pennsylvania.
page 130 note 1 Dudley, Dorothy, Forgotten Frontiers: Dreiser and the Land of the Free (New York, 1932), p. 191Google Scholar.
page 130 note 2 21 September 1901 (Dreiser Collection, University of Pennsylvania).
page 131 note 1 Dreiser Collection, University of Pennsylvania.
page 131 note 2 George C. Jenks to Theodore Dreiser, 9 October 1901 (Dreiser Collection, University of Pennsylvania).
page 131 note 3 William Heinemann to Frank Doubleday, 10 September 1901 (Dreiser Collection, University of Pennsylvania).
page 131 note 4 Stepanchev, ‘Dreiser among the Critics’, p. 19.
page 132 note 1 The influence of the English reviews is quite apparent here, for the review ends: ‘Readers there are who, having perused the five hundred and odd pages which go to the making of ‘Sister Carrie’ will find permanent place upon the shelves for the book beside M. Zola's Nana.’
page 132 note 2 Chicago Tribune, 27 April 1907; ‘Stephen Crane published stories which were greatly admired by men of refinement, but which, to my mind, were much coarser than Sister Carrie.’
page 132 note 3 New York Sun, 11 May 1907: ‘[Sister Carrie] is a survey after the De Goncourt method, with much photographic detail of the progress of a young country girl singularly destitute of moral sense to the eminence of a star actress.’
page 133 note 1 New Orleans Picayune, 1 July 1907; Los Angeles Express, 3 August 1907; Coates, Joseph, ‘Sister Carrie’, North American Review, dcxxiii (10, 1907), 289Google Scholar.
page 133 note 2 Cooper, Frederick Tabor, ‘The fetich of form and some recent novels’, The Bookman, 25 (05, 1907), 283–97Google Scholar.