The Trouble with Dreiser: Harper and the Editing of Jennie Gerhar ...

was a conservative publishing house just recovering from bankruptcy. Jennie Gerhardt needed to make the firm money, and the largest readership was conservative, genteel, middle- and upper-class Americans. The combination of these factors led to the heavy editing of the manuscript and Dreiser's acceptance of the changes even though he believed they were not in the best interest of the novel.

Dreiser began working on Jennie immediately after the publication of his first novel, Sister Carrie, and his experiences in publishing Carrie influenced his decision to allow such a heavy editorial hand in Jennie. When he began Carrie, Dreiser had spent some ten years as a writer and editor for newspapers and magazines, and he believed that the realistic portrayal of American society was the most important literary concern of his time. In a letter to Walter H. Page, he writes:

Thus committed to realism, Dreiser began and quickly finished Carrie in 1900, and presented it to McTeague author Frank Norris. So impressed was Norris with the force of the novel that he immediately recommended it for publication to the newly established Doubleday Page Company, which employed him as a reader: “It gives me pleasure to say…that ‘Sister Carrie’ is the best novel I have read in M.S. since I have been reading for the firm…,” he wrote to Dreiser (Dreiser Collection). Doubleday senior partner Walter H. Page was also impressed and immediately accepted Sister Carrie for publication: “We are very much pleased with your novel,” he wrote to Dreiser (qtd. in Letters I 50). With Carrie accepted for publication, Dreiser believed that his career had taken a definite turn, and he began to envision himself as a force in the literary community. He set about publicizing the novel to friends and colleagues, hopeful that they would spread the word of its publication to potential reviewers. As Lingeman describes, “[Dreiser] was rapidly