Fig. 1: First edition of the book that Frank Doubleday never wanted to publish and did nothing to promote.
Fig. 2: First edition of Masters' book of poems inscribed by Masters to Theodore Dreiser: "For Theodore Dreiser/ artist and master/ Edgar Lee Masters/ Dec 10-'15"
Fig. 3: Edgar Lee Masters was a Chicago lawyer who composed poetry (which he published himself) when he wrote Dreiser in 1912 to praise a recent Dreiser publication, The Financier. In the first page of his letter, he notes that he had followed Dreiser's novels from the beginning, when he found himself absorbed by Sister Carrie. He continues: "You have such a capacity for detail and for the pure fact from which truth is secreted that you pile up in tireless fashion the evidence for your argument."
Fig. 5: This caricature of the two American novelists mocks their realist style, which was often found too frank and unrelenting for popular taste. The drawing was used in the Book Review section of the New York Times on 5 September 1926 with the title "Merciless Realism" and the caption "Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson Watching People Suffer."
