• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

1909 Dreiser and Sara separate. Guglielmo Marconi of Italy and Ferdinand Braun of Germany win the Nobel Prize in Physics for wireless telegraphy. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded, establishing its home office in New York City.

1910 A romance with the seventeen-year-old daughter of one of his associates forces Dreiser’s resignation as Butterick’s editor. In New York City the Manhattan Bridge opens. Emma Goldman’s book Anarchism and Other Essays appears.

1911 Jennie Gerhardt is published to critical praise and support for its author. Marie Curie is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Standard Oil’s largest remaining company is dissolved by the Supreme Court. In Manhattan the Triangle Shirtwaist Company sweatshop catches fire, killing 146 young immigrant workers.

1912 The Financier, the first of the “Trilogy of Desire” series about a ruthless American tycoon (based on transportation magnate Charles T. Yerkes), is published. After years of unhappiness, Dreiser and his wife permanently separate. The Titanic sinks after striking an iceberg on her maiden voyage, killing 1,500 people.

1913 “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away,” a popular song written by Dreiser’s older brother Paul, is adopted as the state song of Indiana. Dreiser publishes A Traveler at Forty, a travelogue of his journey to Europe. Carl Jung publishes The Theory of Psychoanalysis.

1914 World War I breaks out in Europe. The second “Trilogy of Desire” installment, The Titan, is published. American novelist Booth Tarkington publishes Penrod.

1915 Dreiser publishes The “Genius,” a semi-autobiographical novel. It is censured by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and removed from bookshelves. Albert Einstein introduces his General Theory of Relativity.

1916 Dreiser’s memoir A Hoosier Holiday is published, as well as Plays of the Natural and Supernatural. Carl Sandburg publishes Chicago Poems. Nine days after Margaret Sanger opens the nation’s first birth-control clinic in Brooklyn, she is arrested and the clinic is shut down.

1917 The United States enters World War I. Poet T. S. Eliot publishes Prufrock and Other Observations. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia topples the czar and installs V. I. Lenin as the first head of the Soviet state. H. L. Mencken publishes A Book of Prefaces, a collection of literary essays that includes a positive assessment of Dreiser.

1918 Dreiser publishes Free and Other Stories and the novel The Hand of the Potter, whose central character is a child molester. H. L. Mencken publishes In Defense of Women.

1919 World War I ends. Twelve Men, Dreiser’s collection of fictional biographical portraits, appears. He begins a relationship with actress Helen Richardson, his cousin, and moves to Hollywood with her. Sherwood Anderson publishes Winesburg, Ohio, a collection of interconnected stories. Booth Tarkington wins the Pulitzer Prize for The Magnificent Ambersons.

1920 F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes This Side of Paradise. Dreiser publishes a collection of philosophical sketches titled Hey-Rub-a-Dub-Dub. Sinclair Lewis publishes Main Street. Playwright Eugene O’Neill wins the Pulitzer Prize for his drama Beyond the Horizon. Congress passes the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the right to vote.

1922 Dreiser publishes a second memoir, A Book About Myself, on his newspaper days. T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land appears. Ulysses, the avant-garde novel by James Joyce, is published but is burned by the U.S. Post Office. The American stock market takes off, giving rise to the nickname “The Roaring Twenties” for this high-flying decade.

1923 Dreiser publishes The Color of a Great City, a paean to New York. Sigmund Freud publishes The Ego and the Id.

1925 An American Tragedy is published. Based on the actual murder of Grace Brown and the subsequent trial of Chester Gillette, the novel is Dreiser’s first major success. American novelist John Dos Passos publishes Manhattan Transfer. Biology teacher John Scopes is convicted of violating