Sister Carrie (Modern Library)
Edition: New Ed edition
Publisher: Modern Library
Published: July 14, 1997
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 659
ISBN-13: 9780679602507
Subjects: Modern fiction; Mistresses; Dreiser, Theodore, 1871-1945; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Literature: Classics; New York (N.Y.); Classics; Fiction / General; Chicago; Chicago (Ill.); Fiction; Illinois; New York; New York (State); Young women
First sentence: When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money.
Description: Sister Carrie, Dreiser's great first novel, transformed the conventional "fallen woman" story into a bold and truly innovative piece of fiction when it appeared in 1900. Naive young Caroline Meeber, a small-town girl seduced by the lure of the modern city, becomes the mistress of a traveling salesman and then of a saloon manager, who elopes with her to New York.

Both its subject matter and Dreiser's unsparing, nonjudgmental approach made Sister Carrie a controversial book in its time, and the work retains the power to shock readers today.