In Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel, An American Tragedy, an ambitious but dim-witted and unscrupulous young man kills a farm girl he impregnated in order romantically to pursue a more promising socialite. The bungled murder lands him in the electric chair. Dreiser (1871-1945) based his book on the 1906 case of Chester Gillette, who killed pregnant Grace Brown while rowing on a lake in the Adirondacks. Gillette beat Brown, left her to drown and fled to a nearby town, where he was quickly arrested. Like Dreiser's character, Gillette's shifting stories and the ample evidence against him resulted in conviction and execution. The real murder of Grace Brown became a national sensation. As a journalist, Dreiser observed that this kind of crime, in which a young man killed a poorer pregnant girl in order to pursue a richer one, occurred with shocking regularity in the United States.
An American Tragedy was adapted into the 1951 film A Place in the Sun, starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters. It won six Academy Awards. Dreiser's other novels include Sister Carrie (1900), Jennie Gerhardt (1911), The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), The "Genius" (1915), The Bulwark (1946) and The Stoic (1947). He also wrote two plays and numerous nonfiction titles. A new edition of An American Tragedy is available today from Vintage ($12). --Tobias Mutter
