26 Facts About Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school.

Theodore Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, to John Paul Theodore Dreiser and Sarah Maria.

Theodore Dreiser's family disowned her for converting to Roman Catholicism in order to marry John Dreiser.

Theodore Dreiser was the twelfth of thirteen children.

In 1892, Theodore Dreiser started work as a reporter and drama critic for newspapers in Chicago, Saint Louis, Toledo, Pittsburgh and New York.

Theodore Dreiser authored articles on writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, Israel Zangwill, and John Burroughs and interviewed public figures such as Andrew Carnegie, Marshall Field, Thomas Edison, and Theodore Thomas.

In 1895, Theodore Dreiser convinced business associates of his songwriter brother Paul to give him the editorship of a magazine called Ev'ry Month, in which he published his first story, "Forgotten" a tale based on a song of his brother's titled "The Letter That Never Came".

Theodore Dreiser continued editing magazines, becoming editor of the women's magazine The Delineator in June 1907.

In Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser portrayed a changing society, writing about a young woman who flees rural life for the city, fails to find work that pays a living wage, falls prey to several men, and ultimately achieves fame as an actress.

Theodore Dreiser's featuring young women as protagonists dramatized the social changes of urbanization, as young people moved from rural villages to cities.

Theodore Dreiser's first commercial success was An American Tragedy, published in 1925.

From 1892, when Theodore Dreiser began work as a newspaperman, he had begun.

Theodore Dreiser claimed to have collected such stories every year between 1895 and 1935.

Theodore Dreiser based his novel on details and the setting of the 1906 murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in upstate New York, which attracted widespread attention from newspapers.

Theodore Dreiser's story "My Brother Paul" was a biography of his older brother Paul Dresser, who became a famous songwriter in the 1890s.

Politically, Theodore Dreiser was involved in several campaigns defending radicals he believed victims of social injustice.

In November 1931, Theodore Dreiser led the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners to the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky to take testimony from miners in Pineville and Harlan on the pattern of violence against the miners and their unions by the coal operators.

Theodore Dreiser was a committed socialist and wrote several nonfiction books on political issues.

Theodore Dreiser praised the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin during the Great Terror and the non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler.

Theodore Dreiser joined the Communist Party USA in August 1945 and later became the honorary president of the League of American Writers.

In 1919, Theodore Dreiser met his cousin Helen Patges Richardson with whom he began an affair.

Theodore Dreiser planned to return from his first European vacation on the Titanic, but was talked out of it by an English publisher who recommended he board a cheaper ship.

Theodore Dreiser had an enormous influence on the generation that followed his.

Theodore Dreiser was a man of large originality, of profound feeling, and of unshakable courage.

Theodore Dreiser Hall, erected 1950 on the Indiana State University campus in Terre Haute, Indiana, houses the University's Communications Programs, Student Media, Sycamore Video and "The Sycamore", classroom and lecture space as well as a 255-seat proscenium theater.

In 2011, Theodore Dreiser was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.