Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (/ˈdraɪsər, -zər/;[1] August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school.

His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of choice and agency.

[3] John Dreiser was a German immigrant from Mayen in the Rhine Province of Prussia, and Sarah was from the Mennonite farming community near Dayton, Ohio.

[5] In 1892, Dreiser started work as a reporter and drama critic for newspapers in Chicago, St. Louis, Toledo, Pittsburgh and New York.

During this period he published his first work of fiction, The Return of Genius, which appeared in the Chicago Daily Globe under the name Carl Dreiser.

[14] In Sister Carrie, Dreiser portrayed a changing society, writing about a young woman who flees rural life for the city (Chicago), fails to find work that pays a living wage, falls prey to several men, and ultimately achieves fame as an actress.

The novel sold poorly and was considered[citation needed] controversial because it featured a country girl who pursues her dreams of fame and fortune through relationships with men.

From 1892, when Dreiser began work as a newspaperman, he had begun to observe a certain type of crime in the United States that proved very common.

He based his novel on details and the setting of the 1906 murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in upstate New York, a crime that attracted widespread attention from newspapers.

His poem "The Aspirant" (1929) continues his theme of poverty and ambition: a young man in a shabbily furnished room describes his own and the other tenants' dreams, and asks "why?

Other works include Trilogy of Desire, based on the life of Charles Tyson Yerkes (1837–1905), who became a Chicago streetcar tycoon.

Dreiser often was forced[citation needed] to battle against censorship because his depiction of some aspects of life, such as sexual promiscuity, offended authorities and challenged popular standards of acceptable opinion.

They separated in 1909, partly due to Dreiser's infatuation with Thelma Cudlipp, the teenage daughter of a colleague, but were never formally divorced.

[30] Through the following decades, she remained the constant woman in his life, even through many more temporary love affairs (such as one with his secretary Clara Jaeger in the 1930s).

[32] Dreiser planned to return from his first European vacation on the Titanic, but was talked out of it by an English publisher who recommended he board a cheaper ship.

[36] Alfred Kazin characterized Dreiser as "stronger than all the others of his time, and at the same time more poignant; greater than the world he has described, but as significant as the people in it,"[37] while Larzer Ziff (UC Berkeley) remarked that Dreiser "succeeded beyond any of his predecessors or successors in producing a great American business novel.

[41] One of Dreiser's strongest champions during his lifetime, H. L. Mencken,[42] declared "that he is a great artist, and that no other American of his generation left so wide and handsome a mark upon the national letters.

[44] Dreiser Hall, erected 1950 on the Indiana State University campus in Terre Haute, Indiana, houses the University's Communications Programs, Student Media (WISU), Sycamore Video and "The Sycamore" (annual yearbook), classroom and lecture space as well as a 255-seat proscenium theater.