Overview

Thoroughly immersed in the turn-of-the-century art scene, Theodore Dreiser's autobiographical The Genius explores the multiple conflicts between art and business, art and marriage, and between traditional and modern views of sexual morality. Despite heavy editing before its 1915 publication, The Genius was deemed so shocking that its sale was immediately prohibited by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Eventually released in 1923, the novel confirmed Dreiser's status as a writer ahead of his time. Clare Virginia Eby's new edition brings to print for the first time Dreiser's original version of the novel as he composed it in 1911. The protagonist Eugene Witla, as well as the women he loves, emerge as very different characters than they appear in the 1915 edition and the ending takes a markedly different turn. Dreiser's attention to female characters' inner lives and their passions, sexual and otherwise, also renders them more comprehensible and sympathetic. Long understood as the most autobiographical of Dreiser's novels, this new edition suggests a younger, less assertive Dreiser whose mature ideas of self, masculinity, artistic achievement, and worldly success were still in the process of formation.

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Reviews

This is a superb edition: skillfully edited, fully annotated, usefully contextualized. We have been given a new and almost entirely unknown version of The Genius - the text as originally conceived by Dreiser. It now demands our attention and close study. James L. W. West III, general editor of the Cambridge Fitzgerald Edition The Genius is one of the most overlooked and underrated of Dreiser's novels, yet it is arguably the key book for students of the writer. Claire Eby's presentation of this earlier and previously unpublished Genius is a triumph of textual and interpretive scholarship. Miles Orvell, author of The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940 This edition provides an opportunity to follow in close compass Dreisier's process of revision. It captures his point of view at a transitional moment in his career, and it sheds light on his subsequent work, including his masterpiece, An American Tragedy (1925)...the interest of this edition lies in the attention it directs to a major albeit neglected novel. Eugene Witla's story is as much a measure of turn-of-the-century America as The Great Gatsby is an expression of the Jazz Age. William P. Kelly, Times Literary Supplement, May 30th 2008

This is a superb edition: skillfully edited, fully annotated, usefully contextualized. We have been given a new and almost entirely unknown version of The Genius - the text as originally conceived by Dreiser. It now demands our attention and close study. James L. W. West III, general editor of the Cambridge Fitzgerald Edition The Genius is one of the most overlooked and underrated of Dreiser's novels, yet it is arguably the key book for students of the writer. Claire Eby's presentation of this earlier and previously unpublished Genius is a triumph of textual and interpretive scholarship. Miles Orvell, author of The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940 This edition provides an opportunity to follow in close compass Dreisier's process of revision. It captures his point of view at a transitional moment in his career, and it sheds light on his subsequent work, including his masterpiece, An American Tragedy (1925)...the interest of this edition lies in the attention it directs to a major albeit neglected novel. Eugene Witla's story is as much a measure of turn-of-the-century America as The Great Gatsby is an expression of the Jazz Age. William P. Kelly, Times Literary Supplement, May 30th 2008

Author Information

Clare Virginia Eby is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Dreiser and Veblen,Saboteurs of the Status Quo, coeditor of The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser, and editor of the Norton Critical edition of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

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