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"[Sister Carrie's] outstanding merit is its simplicity, its unaffected seriousness
and fervor."H. L. Mencken, author

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 unspoiled beauty and charm, and a pitiful lack of preparation for the complex moral choices she
will face. Her story is one of struggle, from sweatshop to stage success, and of the love she inspires in a
married man twice her age, whose obsession with her threatens to destroy him.

Dreiser reveals with powerful insight the driving forces of our culture: America's restless idealism, glamorous
material seductions, and spiritual innocence.

The book's strengths include a brooding but compassionate view of humanity, a memorable cast of characters,
and a compelling narrative line. It is a work of pivotal importance in American literature, becoming a model for
subsequent American writers of realism.

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945), American novelist, was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, and attended Indiana University. He began his writing career as a newspaperman, working in Chicago, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh. His first novel, Sister Carrie (1900), was purchased by a publisher who thought it objectionable and made little effort to promote its sale. With the publication of The Financier in 1912, he was able to give up newspaper work and devote himself to writing. He became known as one of the principal exponents of American naturalism, and in 1944, he was awarded the Merit Medal for Fiction by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.