from Grant Richards, “Author Hunting”

 

Grant Richards, ‘Author Hunting’ Chs. XV-XVI

 

Posted here (PDF file) above is

Grant Richards

Author Hunting By an Old Literary Sports Man

New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1934

Chapters XV-XVI

 

Narrates Richards’ role in persuading Century Company to finance Dreiser’s trip abroad and preparing the itinerary that would allow Dreiser to study Yerkes’ life in Europe and gain the experiences for A Traveler at Forty, which Richards found offensively indiscreet; also presents Frank Norris’s account of the suppression of Sister Carrie. (annotation, Pizer, Dowell, and Rusch, Theodore Dreiser, A Primary Bibliography and Reference Guide)

 

Franklin Thomas (Grant) Richards was an English publisher who, as is noted in A Theodore Dreiser Encyclopedia, “encouraged the writing of Jennie Gerhardt.”

In 1911 Richards was instrumental in making possible Dreiser’s first trip to Europe, which led to the publication of the latter’s A Traveler at Forty.

Richards, Renate von Bardeleben notes, “offered Dreiser a social entree into London drawing rooms and artistic circles as well as English country homes; he was his part­-time travel companion both in Paris and on the French Riviera, and, wherever needed, he provided Dreiser with detailed travel instructions.”

Dreiser portrayed Richards as “Barfleur” in A Traveler at Forty. His portrayal of Richards and his family and friends led to a dispute between the two and to what turned out to be the demise of their relationship.

 

See “Richards, (Franklin Thomas) Grant,” by Rebate von Bardeleben, in A Theodore Dreiser Encyclopedia, edited by Keith Newlin, pp. 322-324

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

    October 2021

important new publications on Dreiser: his relationship with women; recollections of his contemporaries

 

Dreiser scholar Donald Pizer has published an important new article: “Dreiser’s Relationships with Women,” American Literary Realism 50:1 (Fall 2017), pp. 63-75.

Professor Pizer has published Theodore Dreiser Recalled (Clemson University Press, 2017). The book brings together for the first time published and unpublished memoirs about Dreiser. The recollections of Dreiser’s contemporaries focus on Dreiser’s politics, personal life, and literary reception.

Professor Pizer is one of the world’s leading scholars of Dreiser and of literary naturalism.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  July 2017

 

selections re Dreiser from the diary of Elenaor Anderson

 

 

selections from The Diary of Eleanor Anderson

 

 

 

Posted above as a downloadable Word document:

“Selections from The Diary of Eleanor Anderson, 1933-1940,” compiled by Hilbert H. Campbell, The Sherwood Anderson Review, XXVI (winter 2001), pp. 10-11.

Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson was Sherwood Anderson’s third wife.

I wish to thank Sherwood Anderson scholar Claire Bruyère for calling my attention to this excerpt and providing me with a copy.

 

— Roger W. Smith