the genius

About This Book

Published in 1915, The Genius is a novel by Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945), an ambitious, semi-autobiographical work that follows Eugene Witla, a young artist from the Midwest who rises to success in the New York art world while his personal life — marked by serial affairs and an increasingly troubled marriage — threatens to destroy him. Dreiser based the character partly on the painter Everett Shinn and partly on himself. The novel was suppressed by the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice in 1916 on grounds of obscenity, and was not freely available again until 1923. Dreiser is one of the central figures of American naturalism.

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