An American Tragedy . . . with an introduction by Harry Hansen and with illustrations by Reginald Marsh.

An issuance of The Heritage Club by The Heritage Press. Theodore Albert Dreiser (1871-1945) was an American novelist and journalist best known for his pioneer work in the naturalist school. Dreiser's first commercial success was An American Tragedy (1925), which was made into a film in 1931 and again in 1951 (as A Place in the Sun). An opera was also commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera in 2005. But An American Tragedy is more than simply a powerful murder story. Dreiser pours his own dark yearnings into his character, as he details the young man's course through his ambitions of wealth, power, and satisfaction. This slip cased edition was illustrated by Reginald Marsh (1989-1954), an American painter, born in Paris, most notable for his depictions of life in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. Crowded Coney Island beach scenes, popular entertainments such as vaudeville and burlesque, women, and jobless men on the Bowery are subjects that reappear throughout his work. He studied art under Kenneth Hayes Miller, Guy Pene du Bois, George Luks, and William Sergeant Kendall. He studied fresco under Olle Nordmark and he studied sculpture under Mahonri Young. Reginald Marsh rejected modern art, which he found sterile. Marsh's style can best be described as social realism. His figures are generally treated as types. "What interested Marsh was not the individuals in a crowd, but the crowd itself ... In their density and picturesqueness, they recall the crowds in the movies of Preston Sturges or Frank Capra". Marsh's main attractions were the burlesque stage, the hobos on the Bowery, crowds on city streets and at Coney Island, and women. His deep devotion to the old masters led to his creating works of art in a style that reflects certain artistic traditions, and his work often contained religious metaphors. "It was upon the Baroque masters that Marsh based his own human comedy", inspired by the past but residing in the present.