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Theodore Dreiser. (credit: The Granger Collection, New York)

(born Aug. 27, 1871, Terre Haute, Ind., U.S. — died Dec. 28, 1945, Hollywood, Calif.) U.S. novelist. Born to poor German immigrant parents, Dreiser left home at age 15 for Chicago. He worked as a journalist, and in 1894 he moved to New York, where he had a successful career as a magazine editor and publisher. His first novel, Sister Carrie (1900), about a young kept woman who goes unpunished for her transgressions, was denounced as scandalous. His subsequent novels would confirm his reputation as the outstanding American practitioner of naturalism. After the success of Jennie Gerhardt (1911), he began writing full-time, producing a trilogy consisting of The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), and The Stoic (published 1947), which was followed by The Genius (1915) and its sequel, The Bulwark (published 1946). An American Tragedy (1925), based on a murder trial and itself the basis for the 1931 film by that name and for a 1951 film entitled A Place in the Sun, made him a hero among social reformers.

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