Sister Carrie: A Novel

by Theodore Dreiser

Category: Fiction

Status: Available

Source: Public Domain — Project Gutenberg

About This Book

"Sister Carrie: A Novel" by Theodore Dreiser is a novel published in 1900. It follows eighteen-year-old Caroline Meeber, who leaves small-town Wisconsin for Chicago seeking a better life. In the big city, she becomes involved with two men—a charming salesman and a married bar manager—while discovering her talent for acting. As Carrie rises toward fame and fortune, those around her face vastly different fates. The novel explores ambition, desire, and the pursuit of the American Dream in urban America. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

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Sister Carrie

by Theodore Dreiser

Contents

Chapter I. THE MAGNET ATTRACTING: A WAIF AMID FORCES

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. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother’s farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when the cars clacked b

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About This Edition

This edition of Sister Carrie: A Novel by Theodore Dreiser is catalogued on Libreya under Fiction and runs approximately 156,017 words — about 780 minutes of reading at an average pace. It is sourced from Project Gutenberg, the world's oldest digital library of public domain literature, founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, and every text on Libreya has been verified to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. You can view the original Project Gutenberg edition here.

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About Classic Fiction

Classic fiction represents the highest achievements of literary imagination. The novels in this genre have shaped how generations of readers understand human nature, society, and the fundamental questions of existence. Reading 19th and early 20th-century novels offers far more than historical interest: these stories explore love, ambition, morality, and identity with an insight that remains startlingly relevant today. Authors like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Austen, Hardy, and Dickens wrote for readers much like us — people trying to make sense of a complicated world — and their observations on class, relationships, power, and conscience carry across centuries with barely diminished force. Classic fiction is also where the novel as an art form reached some of its greatest heights: innovative narrative structures, deeply realized characters, and prose styles that reward slow, attentive reading. These are not museum pieces. They are living works that continue to be discussed, adapted, and argued over because they capture something essential and enduring about human experience.