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When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse.'

This landmark novel about a small-town girl who runs away to the big city has been hailed as one of the greatest portraits of urban life in American literature.

The novel is followed by "A Note on the Text," which discusses the relationship between this edition's text and that of the Pennsylvania Edition (1981), and a "Textual Appendix," which provides a generous sampling of the cuts Dreiser and his friend Arthur Henry made in the typescript... Read Full Overview

"When a girl leaves home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse."

This epic of urban life tells of small- town heroine Carrie Meeber, adrift in an indifferent Chicago. Setting out, she has nothing but a few dollars and an unspoiled beauty. Hers is a story of struggle? from sweatshop to stage success'and of the love she inspires in an older,... Read Full Overview

"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." -- Sinclair Lewis
"It is a great novel and belongs on anybody's list, absolutely." --... Read Full Overview

Theodore Dreiser's first and perhaps most accessible novel, Sister Carrie is an epic of urban life - the story of an innocent heroine adrift in an indifferent city. When small-town girl Carrie Meeber sets out for Chicago, she is equipped with nothing but a few dollars, a certain... Read Full Overview

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser is a tale about a young country girl who moves to the city to realize the American Dream, first as a mistress, and later becoming a famous actress.Any profits generated from the sale of this book will go towards the Freeriver Community project,... Read Full Overview

Sister Carrie (1900) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser. Controversial for its honest depiction of work, desire, and urban life, Sister Carrie has endured as a classic of naturalist fiction and remains a powerful example of social critique over a century after its... Read Full Overview

The Sister Carrie edition that was published in 1900, long regarded as a watershed work in American fiction, was actually a censored misrepresentation of Drieser's original story. When, 80 years later, the Pennsylvania Edition first appeared, replete with scholarly... Read Full Overview

This Norton Critical Edition features the 1900 Doubleday Page text of the novel. Backgrounds and Sources reprints excerpts from Dreiser's autobiographies, and a documentary account, drawn largely from Dreiser's correspondence with Frank Norris, Arthur Henry, Walter H.Page and... Read Full Overview

"When a girl leaves home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse." With Sister Carrie , first published in 1900, Theodore Dreiser transformed the... Read Full Overview

Sister Carrie (1900) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser about a young country girl who moves to the big city where she starts realizing her own American Dream, first as a mistress to men that she perceives as superior, and later becoming a famous actress. It has been called the "greatest... Read Full Overview

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time