From photograph by Florence M. Hendershot, Chicago
HAMLIN GARLAND
A vigorous, if undeniably crude, figure in contemporary American fiction, is Theodore Dreiser. Lacking style and literary distinction, frequently bordering on the ridiculous, he nevertheless, by a rigid devotion to a certain kind of realism that omits no details, has built up a following that chooses to regard him as something of a great man. His first book, written a dozen years or more ago, was “Sister Carrie.” It introduced a soiled, unsentimental, rather sordid, but pathetic and very human heroine. After a career in Chicago, Sister Carrie made her way to New York, and eventually climbed to comfortable heights of worldly success.[Pg 21] “Jennie Gerhardt” (1911) was in much the same vein and manner. “The Financier” (1912) gave a picture of American business life as it was or as Mr. Dreiser conceived it to be during the Civil War and the Reconstruction Period. Whatever its merits or demerits may be, “The Genius,” his latest novel, owes its chief prominence to its much debated morality.
Press Illustrating Service
RUPERT HUGHES AND MRS. HUGHES IN THEIR LONG ISLAND HOME
After a life of activity in many fields, Thomas Dixon entered the writing lists with “The Leopard’s Spots” (1902), in which, powerfully if somewhat unevenly, he depicted conditions in certain states of the South under the carpet-bag and negro domination of the late sixties. Following up the same phase of history, he introduced, in “The Clansman,” the Kluklux Klan, and showed the work accomplished by that mysterious organization in bringing about the redemption of the afflicted district. Among Mr. Dixon’s later books are “The Traitor,” “The One Woman,” and “The Sins of the Father.”
CAPT. RUPERT HUGHES