Theodore Dreiser Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Joseph Griffin

Critical Essay by Joseph Griffin

SOURCE: "Later Stories: 1929-1938," in The Small Canvas: An Introduction to Dreiser's Short Stories, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985, pp. 111-27.

In the following essay, Griffin discusses the stories that came after the publication of Chains: "Fine Furniture," "Solution," "Tabloid Tragedy," "A Start in Life," and "The Tithe of the Lord. "

Two years after the publication of Chains, Dreiser's short fiction was in the magazines again with the two-part serialization of a story entitled "Fine Furniture" in Household Magazine, a Topeka, Kansas, monthly of excellent quality, according to [Frank Luther] Mott [in A History of American Magazines, 1938-68]. Available as early as 1923, this story was rejected by nine magazines between 1923 and the time of its acceptance. On 2 April 1929, Household's editor, Nelson Antrim Crawford, wrote Dreiser's agent, George T. Bye, expressing the hope that Dreiser would publish the story in his magazine. Crawford felt that a...
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