Publication Order of Trilogy of Desire Books
| The Financier | 1912 |
| The Titan | 1914 |
| The Stoic | 1947 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Sister Carrie | 1900 |
| Jennie Gerhardt | 1911 |
| The “Genius” | 1915 |
| An American Tragedy | 1925 |
| The Bulwark | 1946 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Free and Other Stories | 1918 |
| Chains: Lesser Novels and Stories | 1927 |
Publication Order of Plays
| Plays of the Natural and the Supernatural | 1916 |
| The Hand of the Potter | 1918 |
Publication Order of Poetry Collections
| Moods: Cadenced and Declaimed | 1926 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| A Traveler at Forty | 1913 |
| A Hoosier Holiday | 1916 |
| Twelve Men | 1919 |
| Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub | 1920 |
| A Book About Myself / Newspaper Days | 1922 |
| The Color of a Great City | 1923 |
| Dreiser Looks at Russia | 1928 |
| A Gallery of Women | 1929 |
| Tragic America | 1931 |
| Dawn | 1931 |
| America Is Worth Saving | 1941 |
| Notes on Life | 1974 |
| An Amateur Laborer | 1983 |
About Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser (1871 to 1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. He is best known for “Sister Carrie” (1900) and “An American Tragedy” (1925), and for the Trilogy of Desire, three novels about a Chicago streetcar tycoon.
Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, on 27 August 1871, the twelfth of thirteen children of a German immigrant father, and grew up in severe poverty. One of his older brothers was the songwriter Paul Dresser. He attended Indiana University for a year without taking a degree, and from 1892 worked as a reporter and drama critic for newspapers in Chicago, St. Louis, Toledo, Pittsburgh and New York. He later edited magazines, including the women’s title The Delineator from 1907.
He began “Sister Carrie” in 1899 while staying in Maumee, Ohio. The novel follows a young woman who leaves rural life for Chicago and eventually becomes a famous actress; it sold poorly and was considered controversial. “Jennie Gerhardt” followed in 1911. The Trilogy of Desire, based on the life of Charles Tyson Yerkes, consists of “The Financier” (1912), “The Titan” (1914) and “The Stoic”, which was published after his death in 1947.
“An American Tragedy” was his first commercial success. Dreiser based it on the 1906 murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in upstate New York. It was filmed in 1931 by Josef von Sternberg and again in 1951 as “A Place in the Sun”, directed by George Stevens with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. Tobias Picker’s opera of the novel had its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 2005. “Sister Carrie” reached the screen in 1952 as “Carrie”, with Laurence Olivier and Jennifer Jones.
Dreiser often had to fight censorship over his frank treatment of sexual behaviour. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, the year it went to Sinclair Lewis. A committed socialist, he wrote political non-fiction including “Dreiser Looks at Russia” (1928) and “Tragic America” (1931), and joined the Communist Party USA in August 1945. He died in Hollywood on 28 December 1945. His last two novels, “The Bulwark” (1946) and “The Stoic” (1947), appeared posthumously.
Photo: Carl Van Vechten (Library of Congress), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).