An American Tragedy and nbsp;is a 1925 novel by American writer and nbsp;Theodore Dreiser. He began the manuscript in the summer of 1920, but a year later abandoned most of that text. It was based on the notorious and nbsp;murder of Grace Brown and nbsp;in 1906 and the trial of her lover. In 1923 Dreiser returned to the project, and with the help of his wife Helen and two editor-secretaries, Louise Campbell and Sally Kusell, he completed the massive novel in 1925. and nbsp;

Unexpurgated version of Dreiser's story of a country girl's rise to riches as the mistress of a wealthy man. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The "Genius" is a semi-autobiographical novel by Theodore Dreiser, first published in 1915. The story concerns Eugene Witla, a talented painter of strong sexual desires who grapples with his commitment to his art and the force of his erotic needs. The book sold 8,000 copies in the months immediately following publication but encountered legal difficulties when it was declared potentially obscene. Dreiser's publisher was nervous about continuing publication and recalled the book from bookstores, and the novel did not receive broad distribution until 1923. When The "Genius" was reissued by a different publisher, the firm of Horace Liveright, it immediately sold more than 40,000 copies

The “Genius” (1915) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser. Based partly on his own experience as an artist from the Midwest, The “Genius” examines the nature of talent, the difficulty of desire, and the meaning of faith itself. Although he had high hopes for the novel, reviews were mixed, and sales suffered due to charges of obscenity. Some critics, however, praised Dreiser’s openness on sex and desire, opposing the censorship targeting the author’s work. Eugene Witla may have been born in a small Midwestern town, but his dreams look past the farmland and fields of his youth to the towers and streets of Chicago. He enrolls at the Chicago Art Institute to study painting, but ultimately spends more time with women than he does in class. Despite his desire to continue his faithless ways, Eugene agrees to marry his lover Angela. Together, they move to New York City, where Eugene’s urban realist style is in high demand from critics and galleries alike. At every turn, however, he feels held back by his obligation to Angela, who has no creative inclination and seems happy to live a simple, anonymous life. On a trip to Europe, Eugene suffers a breakdown and ultimately decides to abandon his art, turning to advertising instead. Although he claims to be satisfied, his behavior soon proves otherwise. The “Genius” is a story of romance, heartache, and betrayal that says as much about a single man as it does about the values of an entire society. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Theodore Dreiser’s The “Genius” is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

Frank Cowperwood is a teenager living in Philadelphia when he comes across a lobster kept in a tank. As the lobster lunges at and devours the other sea creatures helplessly trapped with it, Frank decides that this pitiless example of nature red in tooth and claw is the most effective way of advancing in wealth and human affairs. After making some easy money acting as a middleman for a castile soap distributor, Frank quickly finds himself amassing a fortune in business and investments as the Civil War tears across America. Soon he finds himself willingly embroiled in an embezzlement scheme with the hapless city treasurer—only for it all to violently collapse when the Great Chicago Fire causes a stock market crash. The character of Frank Cowperwood and the events surrounding his life are based on the biography of the real-life streetcar tycoon Charles Yerkes, a man so reviled by his contemporaries that he attempted to rehabilitate his public image by building the Yerkes Observatory, which was to be at the time the world’s largest telescope. Frank, a ruthless and calculating man of acquisition, is a classic example of the type of warped and avaricious robber baron that became a popular stock character in fiction of the era, and that figured prominently in other milestone works, like The Forsyte Saga, that are critical of the spiritual rot that unimaginable wealth can engender in a hyper-capitalist society. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

High quality reprint of An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser.

High quality reprint of An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser.

An American TragedyTheodore DreiserAn American Tragedy (1925) is a novel by the American writer Theodore Dreiser.Ambitious but ill-educated, na�ve, and immature Clyde Griffiths is raised by poor and devoutly religious parents to help in their street missionary work. As a young adult, Clyde must, to help support his family, take menial jobs as a soda jerk, then a bellhop at a prestigious Kansas City hotel. There, his more sophisticated colleagues introduce him to bouts of social drinking and sex with some of the hotel's female guests and with prostitutes.Enjoying his new lifestyle, Clyde becomes infatuated with Hortense Briggs, who inveigles Clyde into buying her an expensive jacket. When Clyde learns Hortense desires his colleague Sparser, not himself, as a lover, he becomes jealous. Hortense repeatedly tells Clyde that she loves him while getting him to buy her the jacket (for which they are overcharged by a stereotypically greedy Jewish shopkeeper).Clyde's life changes dramatically when Sparser, driving Clyde, Hortense and other friends back from a secluded rendezvous in the country in a stolen car, hits a little girl and kills her. Fleeing from the police at high speed, Sparser crashes the car. Everyone but Sparser and his partner flee the scene of the crime. Clyde leaves Kansas City, fearing prosecution as an accessory to Sparser's crimes. This pattern of personal irresponsibility and panicked decision-making in Clyde's life recurs in the story, culminating in the central tragedy of the novel.

'An American Tragedy' is the story of Clyde Griffiths, who spends his life in the desperate pursuit of success. On a deeper, more profound level, it is the masterful portrayal of the society whose values both shape Clyde's ambitions and seal his fate; it is an unsurpassed depiction of the harsh realities of American life and of the dark side of the American dream. Extraordinary in scope and power, vivid in its sense of wholesale human waste, unceasing in its rich compassion, 'An American Tragedy' stands as Theodore Dreiser's supreme achievement.