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The Titan, by Theodore Dreiser. Edited by Roark Mulligan. Winchester: Winchester University Press, 2016. xvii + 628 pp. Paper, 40.00.
"Sister Carrie all over again . . .": so wrote Theodore Dreiser to his friend the critic Albert Mordell on 6 March 1914 upon learning that, despite having signed a contract for his new novel, The Titan, with Harper and Brothers, the venerable firm was pulling the plug on its publication after printing 10,000 copies (Pizer 57). As is well known, Dreiser had suffered a similar embarrassment in 1900 when Frank Doubleday, of Doubleday, Page, and Company, blanching at the bold realism and frank treatment of then-taboo matters, such as sex and religion, effectively suppressed the publication of Dreiser's first novel and sent the author into a tailspin of depression from which it took him some time to recover and start writing again. Fourteen years did, however, make a difference. In 1900 Dreiser was a mostly unknown author with no literary leverage; in 1914, he was a respected writer, critic, editor, and observer of the American scene who had just had a creditable success with The Financier, also brought out by Harpers. And Dreiser had money in the bank; so, as he told Mordell, "my position happens to be by no means . . . insecure" (Pizer 57).
Yet Dreiser was still stunned by the turn of events and not immediately sure what caused it. Why Harpers took such dramatic and unexpected action is investigated in full detail by Roark Mulligan in the historical commentary accompanying Winchester University...