Theodore Dreiser

Reproduction of the original: The Financier by Theodore Dreiser

The Financier

The first of William Morris's great fantasies, The Glittering Plain set the style for such later works as The Wood Beyond the World, The Well at World's End, and The Water of the Wondrous Isles. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

The Titan

A master of gritty naturalism, Theodore Dreiser explores the corruption of the American dream in The Financier. Frank Cowperwood, a fiercely ambitious businessman, emerges as the very embodiment of greed as he relentlessly seeks satisfaction in wealth, women, and power. As Cowperwood deals and double-deals, betrays and is in turn betrayed, his rise and fall come to represent the American success story stripped down to brutal realities-a struggle for spoils without conscience or pity. Dreiser's 1912 classic remains an unsparing social critique as well as a devastating character study of one of the most unforgettable American businessmen in twentieth-century literature. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Clyde Griffith’s parents are poor street-preachers, but Clyde doesn’t “believe,” and finds their work demeaning. At fifteen he gets a job and starts to ease out of their lives, eventually landing in some trouble that causes him to flee the town where they live. Two years later, Clyde meets his well-off uncle, who owns a large factory in upstate New York. Clyde talks his way into a job at the factory, and soon finds himself supervising a roomful of women. All alone, generally shunned by his uncle’s family, and starved for companionship, he breaks the factory’s rules and begins a relationship with a young woman who works for him. But Clyde has visions of marrying a high-society woman, and fortune smiles on him in the form of the daughter of one of his uncle’s neighbors. Soon Clyde finds himself in a love triangle of his own making, and one from which he seems incapable of extracting himself. A newspaperman before he became a novelist, Theodore Dreiser collected crime stories for years of young men in relationships with young women of poorer means, where the young men found a richer, prettier girl who would go with him, and often took extreme measures to escape from the first girl. An American Tragedy, based on one of the most infamous of those real-life stories, is a study in lazy ambition, the very real class system in America, and how easy it is to drift into evil. It is populated with poor people who desire nothing more than to be rich, rich people whose only concern is to keep up with their neighbors and not be associated with the “wrong element,” and elements of both who care far more about appearances than reality. It offers further evidence that the world may be very different from 100 years ago, but the people in it are very much the same. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

An American Tragedy

Regarded as one of Dreiser's best novels, Jennie Gerhardt is here recaptured as it was originally written, restoring it to its complete, unexpurgated form.

Jennie Gerhardt

Титан

The rise and fall of Frank Algernon Cowperwood: a timeless novel of greed, corruption, and amorality, by one of America's great naturalistic writers.

Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925) is a novel about the harsh realities of American life. Based on an actual murder case, the story concerns a young man, Clyde Griffiths, who is born into a religious family. His life changes when he takes work as a bellboy in a hotel in Kansas City and is exposed to the world of alcohol and prostitution. Griffiths's affair with a girl, Roberta, results in pregnancy, and she expects to marry him. But by now Clyde loves another woman.

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S. Lomsargytė-Petkevìčìenė

Dženė Gerhart

Eugene Wilta, an artist, is representative of the social and moral changes that took place at the end of the Victorian 19th century

The Genius

The controversial classic novel of a young woman’s journey from poverty to stardom in capitalist America. Dissatisfied with life in rural Wisconsin, eighteen-year-old Carrie Meeber travels to Chicago. With no money or prospects, her only means of survival is a job in a squalid factory—until Charlie Drouet, a charming, well-dressed man, offers to take her to dinner. Lavishing her with gifts, fine clothes, and her own apartment, Charlie introduces Carrie to a life of wealth and sophistication far removed from the Victorian moralizing of her youth. But when Carrie begins an affair with another man—and a career as an actress—her ambitions and desires reach far beyond what Charlie, or any man, can offer. Later adapted into the Academy Award–nominated film Carrie, starring Laurence Olivier, Sister Carrie is widely considered “one of the landmark novels of the twentieth century” and a masterpiece of literary realism (The New York Times). But when it was first published in 1900, it stirred controversy for its depiction of female sexuality. In his Nobel Prize speech, Sinclair Lewis declared that “Sister Carrie . . . came to housebound and airless America like a great free Western wind, and to our stuffy domesticity gave us the first fresh air since Mark Twain and Whitman.” This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Sister Carrie

THE STOIC

M. Volosov

роман

Финансист

Sesuo Kerė : [romanas]

Amerikoniškoji tragedija

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This landmark 1925 novel--the basis for the acclaimed 1951 film A Place in the Sun--is both a riveting crime story and a devastating commentary on the American dream. Theodore Dreiser was inspired by a true story to write this novel about an ambitious, socially insecure young man who finds himself caught between two very different women--and two very different visions of what his life could be. Clyde Griffiths was born poor and is poorly educated, but his prospects begin to improve when he is offered a job by a wealthy uncle who owns a shirt factory. Soon he achieves a managerial position, and despite being warned to stay away from the women he manages, he becomes involved with Roberta, a poor factory worker who falls in love with him. At the same time, he catches the eye of Sondra, the glamorous socialite daughter of another factory owner, and begins neglecting his lover to court her. When Roberta confronts Clyde with her pregnancy, Clyde's hopes of marrying Sondra are threatened, and he conceives a desperate plan to preserve his dream.

Recounts the author's return to his native Indiana by car in 1916 with artist Franklin Booth

A Hoosier Holiday

In his stories and in such landmark novels as Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) defied literary propriety and broke new ground in American fiction by focusing on life as it is, rather than as it ought to be. Sherwood Anderson, introducing a collection of Dreiser stories, said of him: "If there is a modern movement in American prose writing, a movement toward greater courage and fidelity to life in writing, then Theodore Dreiser is the pioneer and the hero of the movement." Indeed, his bold example paved the way for a new generation of American writers.The five superb stories in this volume vividly attest to the sincerity and depth of Dreiser's gifts as a powerful and original storyteller. They are "Free," the story of a man trying, as his wife lies dying, to understand why he never found happiness in marriage; "The Second Choice" and "Married," two insightful tales of the complex relationships of men and women; "Nigger Jeff," a powerful, disturbing story of a lynching; and "The Lost Phœbe," a poignant tale of a man's search for a lost life partner.

Theodore Dreiser

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