Product Description

From the day of its troubled publication in 1900 to its inclusion in Modern Library's list of of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century, Sister Carrie has been the source of controversy and debate. Regarded as the "first masterpiece of the American naturalistic movement" (The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature), this 100th Anniversary Edition of the classic includes additional material by the author and a new introduction by the definitive Dreiser biographer.

"Dreiser is a pioneer." --Sherwood Anderson

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1957430 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 488 pages

From Amazon.com
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser's revolutionary first novel, was published in 1900--sort of. The story of Carrie Meeber, an 18-year-old country girl who moves to Chicago and becomes a kept woman, was strong stuff at the turn of the century, and what Dreiser's wary publisher released was a highly expurgated version. Times change, and we now have a restored "author's cut" of Sister Carrie that shows how truly ahead of his time Dreiser was. First and foremost, he has written an astute, nonmoralizing account of a woman and her limited options in late-19th-century America. That's impressive in and of itself, but Dreiser doesn't stop there. Digging deeply into the psychological underpinnings of his characters, he gives us people who are often strangers to themselves, drifting numbly until fate pushes them on a path they can later neither defend nor even remember choosing.

Dreiser's story unfolds in the measured cadences of an earlier era. This sometimes works brilliantly as we follow the choices, small and large, that lead some characters to doom and others to glory. On the other hand, the middle chapters--of which there are many--do drag somewhat, even when one appreciates Dreiser's intentions. If you can make it through the sagging midsection, however, you'll be rewarded by Sister Carrie's last 150 pages, which depict the harrowing downward spiral of one of the book's central characters. Here Dreiser portrays with brutal power how the wrong decision--or lack of decision--can lay waste to a life. --Rebecca Gleason

Review
"In restoring Dreiser's masterpiece, the editors of the Pennsylvania Edition have given us more than a literary curiosity; like art historians cleaning a da Vinci fresco, they have uncovered the original glowing with an ancient newness."-Richard Lingeman, The Nation "No work of such historical repute ... has ever been republished with such major change... The 'new' novel ... will probably become the accepted standard."-Herbert Mitgang, New York Times "The 'restored' Sister Carrie ... is in many ways a different book, fuller, less cruel, more recognizably Dreiser's own work."-Alfred Kazin, New York Review of Books

Ingram
Unexpurgated version of Dreiser's story of a country girl's rise to riches as the mistress of a wealthy man.