When Theodore Dreiser sold his manuscript for Sister Carrie to the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1890, he breathed a sigh of relief, glad to have finally found a publisher for the novel he took several years to write. But when the wife of one of the owners was offended by the content of the book, Doubleday tried to back out of the contract. Drieser forced the company to honor the deal, but Doubelday printed only 1008 copies and sold fewer than half of that.
Despite that sad beginning, Sister Carrie only grew in popularity, and has become recognized as one of the great naturalist novels of its eras. Against the over moralizing of the Victorian Age, Sister Carrie told a more realistic...
