An American Masterpiece

Clyde Griffiths finds his social-climbing aspirations and love for a rich and beautiful debutante threatened when his lower-class pregnant girlfriend gives him an ultimatum.

This landmark 1925 novel--the basis for the acclaimed 1951 film A Place in the Sun--is both a riveting crime story and a devastating commentary on the American dream.

One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

Theodore Dreiser was inspired by a true story to write this novel about an ambitious, socially insecure young man who finds himself caught between two very different women--and two very different visions of what his life could be. Clyde Griffiths was born poor and is poorly educated, but his prospects begin to improve when he is offered a job by a wealthy uncle who owns a shirt factory. Soon he achieves a managerial position, and despite being warned to stay away from the women he manages, he becomes involved with Roberta, a poor factory worker who falls in love with him. At the same time, he catches the eye of Sondra, the glamorous socialite daughter of another factory owner, and begins neglecting his lover to court her. When Roberta confronts Clyde with her pregnancy, Clyde's hopes of marrying Sondra are threatened, and he conceives a desperate plan to preserve his dream.

The conclusion to the trilogy based on a real railway tycoon's life, with an amazingly intricate description of high-rolling 19th-century finance (The Wall Street Journal).

Based on the life of railway tycoon Charles Tyson Yerkes, the epic Trilogy of Desire weaves a tale of American capitalism through the rise and fall of Frank Cowperwood. Following The Financier and The Titan, the third novel follows Cowperwood as he heads across the sea to London for a chance to develop a new underground railway system. Though still married to his estranged wife, Aileen, he has found a new paramour in Berenice--among others. Doing what he does best, Frank puts his plans in motion to conquer London's transportation market, guaranteeing the bulk of the profits for himself. However, as his age begins to catch up with him, an illness makes it clear these are the last years of his life, and he must negotiate personal and financial challenges to make his lasting mark on the world--a quest that will ultimately be completed by one of the women in his life.

When a girl leaves home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse.

With Sister Carrie, first published in 1900, Theodore Dreiser transformed the conventional fallen woman story into a genuinely innovative and powerful work of fiction. As he hurled his impressionable midwestern heroine into the throbbing, amoral world of the big city, he revealed, with brilliant insight, the deep and driving forces of American culture: the restless idealism, glamorous materialism, and basic spiritual innocence.

Sister Carrie brought American literature into the twentieth century. This volume, which reprints the text Dreiser approved for publication during his lifetime and includes a special appendix discussing his earlier, unedited manuscript, is the original standard edition of one of the great masterpieces of literary realism.

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Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

Theodore Dreiser is a man who, with the passage of time, is bound to loom larger and larger in the awakening aesthetic consciousness of America. Among all of our prose writers he is one of the few men of whom it may be said that he has . . . never been a trickster. If there is a modern movement in American prose writing, a movement toward greater courage and fidelity to life in writing, Theodore Dreiser is the pioneer and the hero of the movement.--Sherwood Anderson

Long before she was seduced by the cautious and ordinary man whose life she would unravel with no malice and only intermittent interest, the young Carrie Meeber was seduced by the promise of the city--its vitality and reckless possibility, the thrill of material luxury, and the spectacle of power and industry. Banned on publication for its questionable morals, Sister Carrie is the great American novel of seduction, a masterpiece of insight into appetite and innocence.

Such a novel as Sister Carrie stands quite outside the brief traffic of the customary stage. It leaves behind an inescapable impression of bigness, of epic sweep and dignity. It is not a mere story, not a novel in the customary American meaning of the word; it is at once a psalm of life and a criticism of life. . . . [Dreiser's] aim is not merely to tell a tale; his aim is to show the vast ebb and flow of forces which sway and condition human destiny. The thing he seeks to do is to stir, to awaken, to move. One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched.--H. L. Mencken

When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse.'

The tale of Carrie Meeber's rise to stardom in the theatre and George Hurstwood's slow decline captures the twin poles of exuberance and exhaustion in modern city life as never before. The premier example of American naturalism, Dreiser's remarkable first novel has deeply influenced such key writers as William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow, and Joyce Carol Oates. This edition uses the 1900 text, which is regarded as the author's final version.

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A master of gritty naturalism, Theodore Dreiser explores the corruption of the American dream in The Financier.

Frank Cowperwood, a fiercely ambitious businessman, emerges as the very embodiment of greed as he relentlessly seeks satisfaction in wealth, women, and power. As Cowperwood deals and double-deals, betrays and is in turn betrayed, his rise and fall come to represent the American success story stripped down to brutal realities-a struggle for spoils without conscience or pity. Dreiser's 1912 classic remains an unsparing social critique as well as a devastating character study of one of the most unforgettable American businessmen in twentieth-century literature.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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First published in 1925, Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy is widely considered to be one of the best American novels of the twentieth-century. It is the classic tragedy that follows the rise and fall of its central character, the social climbing and self-absorbed Clyde Griffiths. Clyde, raised by very poor and devout parents, has always dreamed of being and having more. He quickly falls under the spell of his richer and wilder co-workers at the prestigious hotel in Kansas City where he works as a bellhop and he is willing to do terrible things to be a part of their world. Clyde's sense of moral responsibility and decency begin to fade as he flees the scene of a senseless crime and his poor choices continue to follow him into the new life he tries to create for himself in New York. Soon he is caught up in a love triangle and his callousness and impulsiveness lead him to decisions with tragic and far reaching consequences. An American Tragedy is an absorbing and impressively detailed character study and a masterful exposition on the destructive powers of ambition, greed, and economic inequality. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

A ruthlessly ambitious mogul finds his life derailed by the financial panic of 1873 in this classic novel by the author of An American Tragedy.

Frank Cowperwood's story begins at an auction sale in Philadelphia, where an unassuming bid for seven cases of soap quickly makes him a large personal gain in just one day. Having grown up among the ruthlessness and glamour of the Gilded Age, Frank finds he has a taste for turning a profit, no matter who gets in his way. Embarking on a life of callous stock brokering, shady political intrigue, sordid crimes, and passionate affairs, Cowperwood walks on the edge--until the Great Chicago Fire and the financial panic that follows send him down a perilous path.

The Financier, the first in a trilogy, is based on the life of tycoon Charles Tyson Yerkes and provides both a glimpse into a fascinating period in American history and a timeless portrait of the dark side of human nature.

This epic of urban life tells of small- town heroine Carrie Meeber, adrift in an indifferent Chicago. Setting out, she has nothing but a few dollars and an unspoiled beauty. Hers is a story of struggle? from sweatshop to stage success?and of the love she inspires in an older, married man whose obsession with her threatens to destroy him.

An American Tragedy is a tour de force one of the most important novels in the American cannon. Ripped from the headlines it follows Clyde Griffiths a handsome ambitious man whose religious upbringing has left him unprepared to pay the price required to realize the American Dream. It's an ambitious novel that unflinchingly confronts the lie of the American Dream and myth of a classless society with opportunities for all and an extraordinary crime novel that will stay with you long after you've turned the last page.

Nothing short of monumental.-- Kirkus

A young Quaker finds material success--and moral challenge--after marrying into a wealthy Philadelphia family, in a novel by the author of Sister Carrie.

Rufus and Hannah Barnes are good Quakers, highly respected in their new community of Dukla, Pennsylvania and strictly loyal to their faith. They pass this loyalty on to their children, including Solon Barnes, who must hold on to his Quaker convictions while living in an increasingly materialistic modern society.

After falling for the lovely Benecia--a daughter of the wealthy Wallin family--Solon is given a position at her father's bank in Philadelphia, poised to work his way up from the bottom. But Solon's faith is challenged by his position at the bank, as his moral values cause him to butt heads with corrupt executives driven by financial gain. Meanwhile, as his own children grow up, they start rebelling against the strict principles they were raised with. As the weight of the world bears down on the noble foundations at the core of his principles, Solon must struggle to remain a bulwark for his faith.

The great American novelist.--Publishers Weekly

A businessman leaves prison and heads to Chicago to regain his fortune--but his past follows close behind him--in this absorbing historical epic.

Newly released from prison, Frank Cowperwood immediately dives back into the stock market after the Panic of 1873, aiming to recover his lost fortune and become a millionaire once more. This time, he has a new plan and sets out for Chicago with his mistress, Aileen.

Using his brutal business sense to snuff out his opponents, Frank has his eyes on the city's street-railway system as his ticket back to the top. But as Frank knows, the past cannot remain buried forever, and it's only a matter of time before his previous misdeeds come back to find him in his new home, threatening his stability--and more importantly, his money.

The great American novelist.--Publishers Weekly

Harlan Miners Speak, originally published in 1932, remains today a vivid record of the plight of coal miners in eastern Kentucky. Led by prominent left-leaning writers Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, and Sherwood Anderson, the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners traveled to Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1931 to examine the situation of the miners and their families.

In The Titan, Theodore Dreiser intricately explores the tumultuous rise of an ambitious protagonist, Frank Cowperwood, whose relentless pursuit of wealth mirrors the paradox of the American Dream. Written in Dreiser's hallmark naturalistic style, the novel paints a vivid tableau of urban life in early 20th century America, exposing the moral complexities and societal forces that shape individual destinies. Through Cowperwood's endeavors in the world of finance and industry, Dreiser reflects on themes of capitalism, ambition, and the often unattainable nature of success, all intertwined with a rich narrative filled with detailed character study and social commentary. Dreiser, a prominent figure in American literature, was influenced by the social realities of his time, including industrialization and economic disparity. His own experiences with poverty and the challenges faced in pursuit of a literary career provided him with profound insights into the world he depicted in his works. The Titan serves as both a continuation of Dreiser's exploration of the human condition and a critique of the societal constructs governing ambition, morality, and power. For readers interested in the interplay of ambition and ethics, as well as the exploration of the American spirit, The Titan is a must-read. Dreiser's masterful storytelling and incisive observations culminate in a profound literary experience that resonates with contemporary themes of aspiration and consequence, making it a timeless reflection on human nature.

Acclaimed American journalist and fiction writer penned a number of noteworthy classics in his day, including Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy. His 1912 novel The Financier was the first in a trilogy of works following the life and career of Frank Cowperwood, a Philadelphia-born entrepreneur whose rising fortunes and intermittent disasters are emblematic of many of those who populated nineteenth-century America

An American Tragedy is a tour de force, one of the most important novels in the American cannon. Ripped from the headlines, it follows Clyde Griffiths, a handsome, ambitious man whose religious upbringing has left him unprepared to pay the price required to realize the American Dream. It's an ambitious novel that unflinchingly confronts the lie of the American Dream and myth of a classless society with opportunities for all, and an extraordinary crime novel that will stay with you long after you've turned the last page.

Nothing short of monumental.-- Kirkus

An American Tragedy (1925) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser. Written and rewritten over a number of years, An American Tragedy is a weighty epic with a cleareyed vision of the decay at the heart of industrialized society. Based on the murder of Grace Brown in 1906, the novel proved controversial for its depiction of depravity and violence, but has endured as a classic of naturalist fiction and remains a powerful example of social critique nearly a century after its publication. A young Midwesterner bucks against his puritan upbringing, drinking with acquaintances and frequenting prostitutes when he isn't busy working any number of thankless jobs. As friends and lovers come and go, he fails to find footing in a society fueled by ambition and cunning. Forced to flee Kansas City after a deadly auto accident, Clyde moves to Chicago before settling in Lycurgus, New York, where he meets a young farmgirl named Roberta Allen. When she becomes pregnant, Clyde begins to feel his dreams of freedom fade, and longs for a way out of marriage. Desperate and confused, he turns to a beautiful socialite named Sondra Finchley, the daughter of a local factory owner. Clyde knows what he should do-marry Roberta, settle down, raise a family-but his reckless ways refuse to remain in the past. This edition of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

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