Sister Carrie (Penguin Classics)

Journalist-turned-author Theodore Dreiser’s novel Sister Carrie, which some consider to be the “greatest of all American urban novels,” is the quintessential country-mouse-in-the-city story, only more… risqué. The novel tells the story of Caroline “Sister Carrie” Meeber, a young girl from rural Wisconsin who moves to Chicago with hopes of becoming a star. Carrie first stays with her older sister and her husband, but she soon becomes involved with a married man and a series of other morally questionable decisions follow. While Carrie may sound obviously blinded by her dreams of a glamorous future — and some may argue that’s because she is — Dreiser chose to present her character and others with a focus on human instinct as opposed to judgment, making it an early work of the naturalist movement. As one might expect, Dreiser had a difficult time finding and securing a publisher for Sister Carrie. After the manuscript had already been rejected twice, Doubleday, Page’s Frank Norris, author of the naturalistic novel McTeague, offered Dreiser a contract for the publication. This resulted in some upset within the publishing house — primarily due to book’s “lack of morality” — and Doubleday, Page tried to back out of the deal. Dreiser demanded that the contract be fulfilled and Doubleday published 1,008 copies in November 1900. However, the novel was perhaps not as thoroughly publicized as it could have been. Just 465 copies actually sold (not including the 129 that were sent out for reviews). The remaining 423 copies were later turned over to a remainder house. Unsurprisingly, Sister Carrie received negative response shortly after publication. Beyond the novel’s general sexual content and overall pessimistic tone, critics of the time took issue with the idea of Carrie engaging in illicit sexual relationships without suffering any consequences. Also unsurprisingly, Sister Carrie is another example of a masterpiece that could only be appreciated with time. In his 1930 Nobel Prize lecture, Sinclair Lewis compared the impact of Dreiser’s Sister Carrie to the work of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. Carrie, a film adaptation directed by William Wyler and starring Laurence Olivier and Jennifer Jones, premiered in 1952. Sister Carrie is ranked 33rd on Modern Library’s “100 Best” English-language novels of the 20th century.

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