an exchange of letters

 

 

 

 

Posted above are letters from

Dreiser to his brother Ed, April 18, 1938

Ed’s reply, April 20, 1938

Also — Rome Dreiser’s death certificate

 

Ed was Dreiser’s young brother

Rome (born Markus Romanus Dreiser) was the second oldest of the Dreiser siblings and Theodore and Ed’s brother.  He is the same Rome, a railroad engineer said to be a drifter, who — in his autobiographical work Dawn, published in May 1931, Dreiser wrote, “drank himself into failure if not death.”

Other Dreiser family members mentioned in Dreiser’s and Ed’s letters are their older sister Mame (Maria Franziska Dreiser) and her husband [Austin] Brennan; sister Emma; Mai (Skelly) Dresser. Ed’s wife; Paul Dresser, who died in 1907, the oldest of the Dreiser siblings; and Vera Dreiser, Ed and Mai’s daughter and Dreiser’s niece.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   May 2021