SOURCE: "Dreiser's Real American Tragedy," in Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 27, No. 2, Spring, 1991, pp. 268-87.

In the following essay, Plank traces the nonfiction sources of An American Tragedy.

In the early 1930s a series of events led Theodore Dreiser to write several articles explaining the historical background of An American Tragedy. Dreiser had based much of the novel, which was published in 1925, on Chester Gillette's murder of Grace Brown in 1906. In 1931 the New York Supreme Court ruled against Dreiser, who had complained about Paramount's film version of the novel. The court held that An American Tragedy was the story of Chester Gillette and therefore was in public domain. That same year, Elisha Kane, a professor at the University of Tennessee, was accused of drowning his wife. Supposedly a copy of An American Tragedy was found in his hotel room. Kane was acquitted, but in 1934 and 1935 two more...