Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) was an American novelist, the central figure of American literary naturalism. Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, the ninth child of a poor German Catholic family, he worked as a newspaper reporter in Chicago, St. Louis and Pittsburgh and as a magazine editor in New York. Sister Carrie (1900) was suppressed by its own publisher; Jennie Gerhardt (1911), The Financier and The Titan followed, and An American Tragedy (1925), based on a real murder case, brought him fame and wealth. His refusal to moralize about his characters and his documentary attention to money, work and desire changed what the American novel could do.