Editing Sister Carrie (section)

==Publication history and response==
[[File:House of the Four Pillars from the northeast.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.15|House of Four Pillars, Dreiser's home in Maumee, where the book was written<ref>{{Cite web |title=Marker #2-48 House of Four Pillars |url=http://www.remarkableohio.org/HistoricalMarker.aspx?historicalMarkerId=54 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131203014337/http://www.remarkableohio.org/HistoricalMarker.aspx?historicalMarkerId=54 |archive-date=2013-12-03 |website=Remarkable Ohio}}</ref>]]

At the urging of his journalist friend Arthur Henry, Dreiser began writing his manuscript in 1899. He frequently gave up on it but Henry urged him to continue. From the outset, his title was ''Sister Carrie'', but he changed it to ''The Flesh and the Spirit'' while writing it; he restored the original name once complete.<ref>Madison, Charles A. ''Irving to Irving: Author-Publisher Relations 1800–1974''. New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1974: 95. {{ISBN|978-0-8352-0772-0}}.</ref>

Dreiser had difficulty finding a publisher for ''Sister Carrie''. [[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday & McClure Company]] accepted the manuscript, but the wife of one of the publishers declared it to be too sordid.<ref>''Books of the Century'', Random House, 1998 New York Times Co., p. 6 {{ISBN|978-0-8129-2965-2}}</ref> Dreiser insisted on publication, and Doubleday & McClure were legally bound to honor their contract; 1,008 copies were printed on November 8, 1900, but the publisher made no effort to advertise the book and only 456 copies were sold.<ref>Madison, Charles A. ''Irving to Irving: Author-Publisher Relations 1800–1974''. New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1974: 97. {{ISBN|978-0-8352-0772-0}}.</ref> However, [[Frank Norris]], who was working as a reader at Doubleday, sent a few copies to literary reviewers.<ref>Theodore Dreiser in [https://books.google.com/books?id=3wiH7tmabm0C&q=%22elmer+adler%22&pg=PA69 ''Breaking Into Print''], ed. Elmer Adler, 2007, pp. 69–71</ref>

From 1900 to 1980, all editions of the novel were of a second altered version. Dreiser's unaltered version was not published until 1981, when the [[University of Pennsylvania Press]] issued a scholarly edition based upon the original manuscript held by the [[New York Public Library]]. It is a reconstruction by a team of leading scholars to represent the novel before it was edited by people other than Dreiser.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Sister Carrie (Pennsylvania Edition) |url=http://textsvr.library.upenn.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?sid=141ec7b284f10db37cc911db0394fb9f&page=pagespec&pagename=abouttse.tpl&cc=carrie_penn&c=carrie_penn |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720100434/http://textsvr.library.upenn.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?sid=141ec7b284f10db37cc911db0394fb9f&page=pagespec&pagename=abouttse.tpl&cc=carrie_penn&c=carrie_penn |archive-date=2011-07-20 |website=Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts}}</ref>

In his [[Nobel Prize in Literature|Nobel Prize]] Lecture of 1930, [[Sinclair Lewis]] said that "Dreiser's great first novel, ''Sister Carrie'', which he dared to publish thirty long years ago and which I read twenty-five years ago, came to housebound and airless America like a great free Western wind, and to our stuffy domesticity gave us the first fresh air since [[Mark Twain]] and [[Walt Whitman|Whitman]]."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1930/lewis/lecture/|title=The Nobel Prize in Literature 1930|website=NobelPrize.org}}</ref>

In 1998, the [[Modern Library]] ranked ''Sister Carrie'' 33rd on its list of the [[Modern Library 100 Best Novels|100 best English-language novels of the 20th century]].