Theodore Dreiser's Ev'ry Month

These early writings by American novelist Theodore Dreiser provide a major piece missing from the puzzle of his formative years. Collected in this volume are reviews and opinion pieces that Dreiser published in Ev'ry Month, a popular Women's magazine that he edited for twenty-four issues, from October 1895 through September 1897. It was during this time, says Nancy Warner Barrineau, that Dreiser completed his transformation into the writer whose distinguished career would begin with Sister Carrie (1900), a masterpiece of American Realist fiction. In her introduction, Barrineau discusses how writing in Ev'ry Month allowed Dreiser to discover his essential fictional material, a form to fit it in, and a philosophy of literature and life to guide it. His role as drama critic supplied him with the theater material that is central to Sister Carrie, and his book reviews hint at what he personally liked and felt others should as well - works by such authors as Honore de Balzac, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Stephen Crane, and William Dean Howells.