2 Theodore Dreiser first editions are documented on this shelf, from Sister Carrie (1900) to An American Tragedy (1925) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Theodore Dreiser title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.

Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Theodore Dreiser copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

Sister Carrie — 1900 · Doubleday, Page & Co., New YorkTrue first: Doubleday, Page & Co., New York, 1900 — Dreiser's first book. Bound in publisher's deep red cloth (buckram), the front board lettered and ruled in black and the spine lettered in black. The title-page date matches the copyright date (1900); this correspondence is the basic point. 1,008 copies were printed in November 1900; roughly 465 sold, about 129 went out as review copies, and the remaining 423…. CENSUS CLAIM CONFIRMED, with one caution on framing. US Doubleday, Page (New York, 1900) is the true first. The first British edition is William Heinemann, London, 1901, issued as the sixth volume in Heinemann's short-lived 'The Dollar Library: A Monthly Series of American Fiction' — and it is an ABRIDGED text: Heinemann required the first 200 pages be condensed to roughly 80 to fit the series, and about 73 of…. No book-club tells exist for an 1900 title. The reprint traps are the later reissues that brought the novel to a wider public: B. W. Dodge & Company, New York, 1907 (original maroon pictorial cloth embossed in orange and gilt), and Grosset & Dunlap, 1908, printed from the B. W. Dodge sheets and distinguished by the Grosset & Dunlap publisher's stamp at the foot of the spine and a colour frontispiece by Florence….
An American Tragedy — 1925 · Boni & LiverightFirst edition, first printing: two octavo volumes, Boni and Liveright, New York, 1925, with no statement of printing on the copyright page — the absence of any printing statement plus the 1925 Boni & Liveright imprint is the identification, not a number line. Bound in original black cloth, titling and the author's stylized initials stamped in gilt on the spines and front covers (some dealers describe the…. US Boni & Liveright, New York, 1925 (two volumes) is the true first and the collected edition; the census claim is confirmed. The UK Constable edition followed in 1926 and is not the first. The separate signed limited issue of 795 numbered copies, signed by Dreiser, is a distinct limited issue rather than the trade first. The 1929/1930 Horace Liveright one-volume printing carries a 'New Edition in One Volume, September, 1929' statement and is a later, reset edition — the most common look-alike, and the single-volume format alone rules out the first. Any later trade or reprint issue in one volume is a 'first thus' trap; the 1925 first is always two volumes in a slipcase.

More Literary Fiction (US) & Award Winners shelves: Theodore Roethke, Theodore Sturgeon, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Love Peacock, Thomas McGuane, Thomas Pynchon.

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