Dreiser, Theodore Herman Albert (1871–1945)

US writer. His works include the naturalist novels Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925), based on the real-life crime of a young man, who in his drive to ‘make good’, drowns a shop assistant he has made pregnant. It was filmed as A Place in the Sun (1951).

Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, Dreiser was a journalist 1889–90 in Chicago and was editor of several magazines. His other novels include The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), and The Genius (1915). An American Tragedy finally won him great popularity after years of publishing works that had been largely ignored. His other works range from autobiographical pieces to poems and short stories. Although his work is criticized for being technically unpolished, it is praised for its powerful realism and sincerity. In the 1930s he devoted much of his energy to the radical reform movement.