the same dates. Dreiser states in the early part of “I Find” that the Gillette case
n o t e s t o p a g e s 2 9 1 – 2 9 7
4 4 5
did not come to his attention until two years before he completed the novel. But
see Thomas P. Beyer to TD, December 2, 1926; TD to Beyer, December 16, 1926
(Penn); and L, 2: 458. For the idea that An American Tragedy was “mere jour-
nalism,” see FF, 462; Oscar Cargill, Intellectual America (New York: Macmillan,
1941), 111; and H. L. Mencken, “Preface,” An American Tragedy (Cleveland: World
Publishing Company, 1947), i.
2. The most basic sources for the Gillette-Brown case and the genesis of the
novel, aside from newspaper accounts, are the Herkimer County court records
and abstract of the appeal; John F. Castle, “The Making of An American Tragedy”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1952); John William Reynolds, “The Gen-
esis and Compositional History of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy
(Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1999); Joseph W. Brownell and Patri-
cia A. Wawrzaszek, Adirondack Tragedy: The Gillette Murder Case of 1906 (In-
terlaken, N.Y.: Heart of the Lake Publishing, 1986); and Craig Brandon, Mur-
der in the Adirondacks: An American Tragedy Revisited (Utica, N.Y.: North
Country Books, 1986). Brandon’s information on the Gillette case is also used
to advantage by Shelley Fisher Fishkin in “Dreiser and the Discourse of Gen-
der,” in Theodore Dreiser: Beyond Realism, ed. Miriam Gogol (New York: New
York University Press, 1995), 6–7. One other source, now apparently lost because
it appeared before dissertations were either kept by university libraries or mi-
crofilmed, is Emil Greenberg’s master’s thesis: “A Case Study in the Technique
of Realism: Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy” (New York University,
1936).
3. “I Find the Real American Tragedy,” 11; and Brandon, Murder in the Adiron-
dacks, 60, 75–79.
4. Excerpts from both Grace’s and Roberta’s letters are juxtaposed in Castle,
“The Making of An American Tragedy, ” 36–44.
5. Brandon, Murder in the Adirondacks, 203, 236; and New York World, March
31, 1908.
6. In Dreiser and Veblen: Saboteurs of the Status Quo (Columbia: University
of Missouri Press, 1998), Clare Virginia Eby adequately demonstrates that “Ve-
blen’s influence during Dreiser’s lifetime was so pervasive that Dreiser could sim-
ilarly have ‘read’ him without ever opening a single book” (8).
7. “I Find a Real American Tragedy,” 5. For elucidating comments on the
novel’s setting, see Ellen Moers, Two Dreisers (New York: Viking Press, 1969),
278; Paul A. Orlov, “An American Tragedy”: Perils of the Self-Seeking “Success”
(Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1998), 66–67; and Donald Pizer, The
Novels of Theodore Dreiser: A Critical Study (Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press, 1976), 217.
8. See Richard W. Dowell, “Dreiser Meets Fitzgerald . . . Maybe,” DS 22 (Fall
1991): 20–25; Thomas P. Riggio, “Dreiser, Fitzgerald, and the Question of
n o t e s t o p a g e s 2 9 8 – 3 0 2
4 4 6
Influence,” in Theodore Dreiser and American Culture, ed. Yoshinobu Hakutani (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000), 234–47; and TD to Ernest Boyd,
January 15, 1923 (Virginia).
9. “I Find the Real American Tragedy,” 6; ML, 76; and Robert H. Elias,
Theodore Dreiser: Apostle of Nature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970; orig.
pub. 1948), 220.
10. See “I Find the Real American Tragedy,” 5–7, and “American Tragedies”
(Penn),
11. Dreiser’s extensive collection of clippings pertaining to the Molineaux trial,
along with his handwritten copy of the coroner’s jury verdict of February 27,
1899, and his trial chapters are in the Dreiser Collection at Penn. The chapters
themselves have been edited by Kathryn M. Plank, “The Rake, ” Papers in Liter-
ature and Language 27 (Spring 1991): 140–73.
12. Dreiser speaks of writing a novel based on the Richeson case in “Amer-
ican Tragedies.”
13. TD to Helen Richardson, June 5, 1924 (Penn; partially quoted in AD,
412n).
14. AD, 400–401; and ML, 83–85.
15. Roy C. Higby, “Record of Gillett [ sic]-Brown,” [August 1973] (Cornell),
reprinted in A Man from the Past (Big Moose Press, 1974); AT, 2: 86–87; and
“Woodsmen Planned Lynching Gillette,” New York World, July 21, 1906.
16. Brandon, Murder in the Adirondacks, 365; and Reynolds, “Genesis and
Compositional History,” 93, where it is noted that Dreiser admits in a deleted
section of “I Find the Real American Tragedy” to using only newspaper sources,
not court records, as the basis for his novel. See also TD to Randall Whitman,
August 23, 1930 (Penn); and Pizer, Novels of Dreiser, 208, 215–17.
17. Burton Rascoe, “A Bookman’s Day Book,” New York Tribune, December
24, 1922; Boni & Liveright sales figures (Penn); TD to Marion Bloom, Novem-
ber 7, 1923, and TD to L. E. Pollinger, November 23, 1923 (Penn).
18. TD to Sallie Kussell, August 4, 1923 (Virginia); TD to Helen Richard-
son, March 30, 1924 (Penn); and Letters to Louise: Theodore Dreiser’s Letters to
Louise Campbell, ed. Louise Campbell (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva-
nia Press, 1959), 19–22.
19. TD to Helen Richardson, June 18 and June 2, 1924 (Penn); AD, 410n;
ML, 105; L, 2: 430–31; and TD to Helen Richardson, May 26, 1924 (Penn).
20. Thomas R. Smith to TD, June 3, 1925 (Penn). Reviewers of the novel
would concur: “Nothing that I have ever . . . read for thirty years aªected me as
those masterly pages where the crisis of the tragedy comes into sight” ( TDCR,
458). For Smith’s working relationship with Dreiser, see Donald Friede, The Me-
chanical Angel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), 22.
21. ML, 106, where Helen Richardson errs in stating that the lease for the
n o t e s t o p a g e s 3 0 3 – 3 0 9
4 4 7
Brooklyn apartment was signed on January 1, 1924, instead of 1925; see also
108–9.
22. ML, 113; and “Dreiser Interviews Pantano in Death House; Doomed Man
Avows Faith in Hereafter,” New York World, November 30, 1925.
23. AT, 2: 362–64.
24. AT, 2: 366, 369, 388, 398. See William L. Phillips, “The Imagery of Dreiser’s
Novels,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 78 (December 1963):
572–85, reprinted in Merrill Studies in “An American Tragedy,” ed. Jack Salzman
(Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company, 1971); and F. O.
Matthiessen, Theodore Dreiser (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1951), 194.
25. DML, 2: 548; see also Moers, Two Dreisers, 266–85; Thomas P. Riggio,
“American Gothic: Poe and An American Tragedy, ” American Literature 49 ( Jan-
uary 1978): 515–32, reprinted in Essays on An American Tragedy, ed. Harold Bloom
(New York: Chelsea House, 1988); and Del G. Kehl, “An American Tragedy and
Dreiser’s Cousin, Mr. Poe,” Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature
32 (Autumn 1978): 211–21.
26. DML, 2: 546–49; and L, 2: 435–36.
27. Matthiessen, Dreiser, 195.
28. For Bulger, See chapter 1. The last known address for Al Dreiser was in
1934, at 1235 Muirhead Street, Los Angeles; he had apparently written Dreiser about
his share of the royalties from the publication of The Songs of Paul Dresser. See L,
2:, 667–69; and Evelyn Light (for TD) to Al Dreiser, March 29, 1934 (Penn).
29. TD to Helen Richardson, April 10, 1924 (Penn); and AT, 1: 294.
30. Thomas R. Smith to Horace Liveright, July 31, 1924 (Penn).
31. AT, 1: 77–78, 80.
32. Reynolds, “Genesis and Compositional History,” 23; and AT, 1: 174.
33. “Admitting Guilt, Gillette Goes to Chair,” New York World, March 31,
1908; and “I Find the Real American Tragedy,” 10–11. There is some doubt cast
on Gillette’s confession since the press had already distorted other details of the
case in order to sensationalize it. During his final visit with his mother, Chester
hinted that he was guilty of murder, but he otherwise wanted to protect his
family from having to bear that legacy. If he ever made a formal confession,
there is no extant record of it. See Brandon, Murder in the Adirondacks, 248,
288–89, 292, 295.
34. Philip Gerber, ed., “‘A Beautiful Legal Problem’: Albert Lévitt on An Amer-
ican Tragedy, ” Papers on Language and Literature 27 (Spring 1991): 214–42.
35. Robert L. Duªus, “Dreiser’s Undisciplined Power,” New York Times, Jan-
uary 10, 1926; AT, 2: 406–9; and William C. Lengel, “The ‘Genius’ Himself,”
Esquire 10 (September 1938): 55. In a magazine interview some months before
publication, Dreiser referred to Crime and Punishment as “that supreme work”;
see Walter Tittle, “Glimpses of Interesting Americans: Theodore Dreiser,” Cen-
tury Magazine 110 (August 1925): 441–47.
n o t e s t o p a g e s 3 0 9 – 3 1 5
4 4 8
36. See TD to Helen Richardson, August 25, 1924 (Penn); ML, 110; and AD, 417–18.
37. AD, 419; and DML, 2: 727, 550–51.
38. Thomas R. Smith to TD, January 9, 1926 (Penn).
39. H. L. Mencken, “Theodore Dreiser,” A Book of Prefaces (New York: Al-