21 Theodore Dreiser, The Hand of the Potter (1919; reprinted in The Collected Plays of Theodore Dreiser, ed. Keith Newlin and Frederic E. Rusch [Albany, NY: Whitston Publishing Company, Inc., 2000]), p. 222. This phrase recurs
throughout the play.
22 Dreiser originally published “A Doer of the Word” in 1902 in Ainslee’s magazine, basing the title character on a Connecticut man he briefly met. He was plucking the piece from oblivion when he collected it in book form for the first time
as one of the dozen sketches that made up Twelve Men. The relation between Charlie and Isadore is further suggested by the shared use of the word “potter”: Isadore is a character in The Hand of the Potter, while Charlie’s surname is Potter. The repetition of this word points to Dreiser’s curiosity about how
extreme characteristics are formed.
23 Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy (1925; reprinted in New York: Signet Classic, 2000), p. 5. Future citations are from this edition, and will be given parenthetically within the text.
24 The letters were real. Dreiser drew heavily on the transcript of the 1906 murder trial of Chester Gillette for the courtroom scenes in An American Tragedy.
The victim, Grace Brown, had written Gillette a series of loving, mournful, and despairing letters, which fell into prosecutors’ hands. They were read aloud at Gillette’s trial with devastating effect, and he was quickly convicted. Though he greatly alters Gillette’s life story in creating Clyde, Dreiser could not improve on reality here: he quotes Brown’s letters verbatim.
25 E. Anthony Rotundo, “Learning about Manhood: Gender Ideals and the Middle-
Class Family in Nineteenth-Century America,” in J. A. Mangan and James
Walvin, eds., Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America 1800–1940 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), pp. 36, 37. Also see Rotundo, American Manhood, pp. 26–27. The related categories of “Christian Gentleman” and “Masculine Achiever” were originally delineated by Charles
Rosenberg, “Sexuality, Class, and Role in Nineteenth-Century America,” in
Elizabeth Pleck and Joseph H. Pleck, eds., The American Man (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980), pp. 219–254.
26 G. Stanley Hall, “Feminization in Schools and at Home: The Undue Influence
of Women Teachers – The Need for Different Training for the Sexes” (1908),
quoted in Rotundo, American Manhood, p. 269.
27 Rotundo, “Learning,” p. 40. Clyde’s father is described in the opening scene of An American Tragedy as having an “impractical and materially inefficient 212
Dreiser and crime
texture” which “bespoke more of failure than anything else” (2). Alone of the
family, his mother possesses “force and determination” (3).
28 J. Adams Puffer, The Boy and his Gang (1912), quoted in Kimmel, Manhood in America, p. 160.
29 Kimmel, Manhood in America, p. 120.
30 Peter N. Stearns, Be a Man! Males in Modern Society (2nd edn., New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1990), p. 63.
31 Rev. William Whitmarsh, quoted in Rotundo, American Manhood, p. 236.
32 William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (1902; reprinted in New York: Collier Books, 1961), p. 290; Rafford Pyke, “What Men Like in Men” (1902),
quoted in Kimmel, Manhood in America, p. 122.
33 Theodore P. Greene, America’s Heroes: The Changing Models of Success in
American Magazines (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), esp. pp. 110–
165, 232–282.
34 See Joe L. Dubbert, A Man’s Place: Masculinity in Transition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1979), pp. 137–140; Kimmel, Manhood in America, p. 224.
35 Rotundo, American Manhood, p. 245.
36 For an overview of the link between masculinity and individualism, see Rotundo, American Manhood, pp. 279–283.
37 For a discussion of doubling of characters in An American Tragedy, see Lee Clark Mitchell, Determined Fictions: American Literary Naturalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), ch. 3.
38 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), ed. Elizabeth Ammons (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1994), p. 362.
39 Lingeman, Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey, 1908–1945, p. 255.
G U I D E T O F U RT H E R R E A D I N G
Dobson, Joanne. “Reclaiming Sentimental Literature,” American Literature 69.2, June 1997: 263–288.
Dubbert, Joe L. A Man’s Place: Masculinity in Transition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1979.
Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in America: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1996.
Mullan, John. Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Rosenberg, Charles. “Sexuality, Class, and Role in Nineteenth-Century America,”
in Elizabeth Pleck and Joseph H. Pleck, eds., The American Man. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980), pp. 219–254.
Rotundo, E. Anthony., American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
Stearns, Peter N. Be a Man! Males in Modern Society. New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1990.
213
S E L E C T B I B L I O G R A P H Y
Dreiser’s writings
Dreiser’s works do not exist in a uniform edition. References in this Companion are to widely available paperbacks when possible; these are given below, along with the original publication date in parentheses. In most other cases, first editions are referenced. Most of Dreiser’s best-known writings, published during his lifetime, had been extensively edited, at times bowdlerized, by others before their initial appearance.
The Dreiser oeuvre is complicated by the posthumous reissuing of his works minus this second-party editing, beginning with the Pennsylvania Edition of Sister Carrie in 1981, which is a significantly different text than the novel as it first appeared in 1900.
The Pennsylvania Edition (renamed the Dreiser Edition in 2003) is an ongoing project and is far from complete. When two versions of Dreiser’s works are available, both the text published during his lifetime and the posthumous Pennsylvania Edition are valuable texts, each authoritative in its own way. Initial publication dates below are given parenthetically; volumes published in the Pennsylvania Edition are so noted in square brackets. A number of posthumous collections of Dreiser’s non-fictional writings have also appeared; those with particular biographical significance are preceded by an asterisk.
∗ An Amateur Laborer. Eds. Richard W. Dowell, James L. W. West III, and Neda M.
Westlake. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.
America is Worth Saving. New York: Modern Age Books, 1941.
∗ American Diaries 1902–1926. Eds. Thomas P. Riggio, James L. W. West III, and Neda M. Westlake. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.
An American Tragedy (1925). New York: Signet, 2000.
Art, Music, and Literature, 1897–1902. Ed. Yoshinobu Hakutani. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
∗ A Book About Myself. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922. Reissued in 1931 as Newspaper Days. [Pennsylvania Edition. Newspaper Days: An Autobiography, ed. T. D. Nostwich. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.]
The Bulwark. Garden City: Doubleday, 1946.
Chains: Lesser Novels and Stories by Theodore Dreiser. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1927.
Collected Plays of Theodore Dreiser. Eds. Keith Newlin and Frederic E. Rusch.
Albany, NY: Whitson Publishing Co., 2000.
214
s e l e c t b i b l i o g r a p h y
The Color of a Great City. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923.
∗ Dawn. New York: Horace Liveright, 1931.
Dreiser Looks at Russia. New York: Horace Liveright, 1928.
Dreiser’s Russian Diary. Eds. Thomas P. Riggio and James L. W. West III. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
The Financier (1912). New York: Signet, 1967.
Free and Other Stories. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1918.
A Gallery of Women ( 1929). New York: Fawcett Publications, 1962.
The “Genius” (1915). New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923.
The Hand of the Potter. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1919.
Harlan Miners Speak: Report on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields [by Theodore Dreiser and the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners]. 1932.
Reprinted, New York: Da Capo Press, 1970.
Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub: A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of Life. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920.
∗ A Hoosier Holiday. New York: John Lane Company, 1916.
Jennie Gerhardt (1911). New York: Penguin, 1989. [Pennsylvania Edition, ed. James L. W. West III. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.]
The Living Thoughts of Thoreau, Presented by Theodore Dreiser, ed. New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1939.
Moods, Cadenced and Declaimed. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926. Enlarged edition published by Simon and Schuster, 1935.
Notes on Life. Eds. Marguerite Tjader and John J. McAleer. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1974.
Plays of the Natural and Supernatural. New York: John Lane Company, 1916.
Selected Magazine Articles of Theodore Dreiser: Life and Art in the American 1890s.
Ed. Yoshinobu Hakutani. Rutherford, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press,
1985.
Sister Carrie (1900). Norton Critical Edition, ed. Donald Pizer. 2nd edition. New York: Norton, 1991. [Pennsylvania Edition, eds. John C. Berkey, Alice M. Winters, James L. W. West III, and Neda M. Westlake. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1981.]
The Stoic (1947). New York: Signet, 1981.
Theodore
Dreiser
Journalism,
vol.
1.
Newspaper
Writings,
1892–1895.
[Pennsylvania Edition.] Ed. T. D. Nostwich. Philadelphia: University of