DREISER, Theodore

Sister Carrie

New York: Doubleday, Page, 1900. First edition. First printing. Octavo (20cm). Original deep red buckram, lettered in black. Hinges stressed, with partial hairline cracks, but holding; slight rubbing and wear at joints and spine ends, with spine titling a bit dulled; still a solidly Very Good copy in the publisher's cloth. Ink gift inscription to a Bessy Stafford, dated "Spring '01," to front pastedown.

First edition of Dreiser’s first book, a great classic of American naturalism, depicting the rise of humble factory girl Carrie Meeber and the simultaneous disintegration of her reckless paramour George Hurstwood. A thousand copies of the novel were bound and, according to the publisher's records, only 456 copies sold. The myths surrounding the publisher's "suppression" of Sister Carrie, created largely by Dreiser himself, were probably exaggerated, but there is no question that senior editor Frank Doubleday was unenthusiastic about the novel, which he considered immoral. Other editors at Doubleday Page, especially Frank Norris, worked hard on Dreiser's behalf, but in the end Sister Carrie met the fate of many a book too far ahead of its time – reviewers, accustomed in their labor fiction to the sort of unambiguous "problem" novels that had proliferated in the previous decade, were nonplussed; the few copies sold languished on store shelves; orders were not replaced; and a second printing did not take place until the Boni & Liveright edition of 1912. For this still widely-admired classic, the first important work of American literary naturalism, Dreiser netted a little over $68 in royalties. Rare in the original binding. No dustwrapper has ever been noted. BLAKE (The Strike in the American Novel) p.224.

Price: $5,000.00

Go Back