Among these groups was the Boston Booksellers Committee. Founded in 1915 as an offshoot of the New England Watch and Ward Society, the committee evaluated new publications and told the city’s booksellers which titles should not be stocked. Though it had no formal power, the committee was highly influential, threatening legal action against those who contravened its actions. It even asked the district attorney for informal opinions on which books to ban.

In 1927, the committee tried to suppress Theodore Dreiser’s magnum opus, An American Tragedy, for its subject matter—sex, abortion, murder—and “obscene language.” Published on December 17, 1925, and based on the 1906 trial of Chester Gillette for the murder of his pregnant girlfriend, Grace Brown, the novel tells the story of a young man who romances two women and ends up killing one. 

Dreiser’s publisher, Donald Friede, decided to test the ban by personally selling a copy to a Boston police lieutenant and was arrested. Friede’s defense was that An American Tragedy was a phenomenal book and should not be banned on the basis of a few off-color passages. That defense would be successful a few years later with James Joyce’s Ulysses, but it didn’t work for Friede: He was found guilty and fined $200.

In honor of the 100th anniversary of An American Tragedy, here is a collection of websites that pertain to the book, its author, and its role in the history of American censorship.

THE BOOK

An American Tragedy—Here’s the full text of the novel from Project Gutenberg. It entered the public domain on Jan. 1, 2021.

Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy—This collection of essays, which was edited by literary critic and Yale University professor Harold Bloom, is available in full text through the Internet Archive free of charge. Simply register for the site and borrow the book as if from a library.

An American Tragedy (1931) Review—Dreiser’s novel was made into a movie in 1931 starring Phillips Holmes, Sylvia Sidney, and Frances Dee. Films of that year were “pre-Code”—i.e., before widespread adoption of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1934, also known as the Hays Code. (You can read the full text of it via History Matters.) This cheeky blog run by librarian Danny Reid specializes in movies of that era.

THE MAN

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)—This page from Annenberg Learner, an initiative that provides K–12 teachers with educational videos and other materials, is part of a survey of American literary history that positions Dreiser in the social realism movement.

Theodore Dreiser Collection—From the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, this site collects letters, manuscripts, images, and other documents related to Dreiser. It also links to other Dreiser sites such as Roger W. Smith’s.

Theodore Dreiser—Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, and lived in the state through college. Naturally, the Stories of the Hoosier State site from Indiana University’s Lilly Library is a great resource for Dreiseriana.

Happy 150th Birthday, Theodore Dreiser—Not just a novelist, Dreiser published many short stories, poems, essays, and other occasional pieces. This Library of America site reproduces four of his best-known stories: “The Country Doctor,” “A True Patriarch,” “The Village Feudists,” and “W.L.S.” It also links to articles such as an analysis of the 1951 film A Place in the Sun, an adaptation of An American Tragedy.

THE CRIME

“Chester Gillette, Theodore Dreiser, and the Origins of America’s Fascination With True Crime”—This article from the mystery site CrimeReads tells the true story behind An American Tragedy. It was written by L.R. Dorn, whose 2021 novel The Anatomy of Desire is a reimagining of Dreiser’s tale.

An American Tragedy: The Murder of Grace Brown—A longer and more in-depth telling of Chester Gillette’s murder of Grace Brown and his arrest from Crime Library, one of the internet’s most comprehensive sites devoted to famous misdeeds.

“An American Tragedy—The Ruthless True Crime Story Behind a Famous Oscar Winning Film”—Short documentary by the YouTube channel Scary Mysteries about the Gillette case, filled with photographs and other images from the era, such as the front page of the New York Journal that proclaimed “Gillette Doomed.”

THE PUNISHMENT

Censored—This online exhibit from the University of Virginia Library includes digital images of handwritten letters by Dreiser, Henry Miller, and Arthur Conan Doyle, all discussing censorship topics. 

“‘Banned in Boston’—Everything Quiet?”—The banning of An American Tragedy was part of a larger censorship movement that garnered the name “Banned in Boston.” This 1952 Harvard Crimson article offers a history of that movement. 

Purity in Print—Like the essay collection edited by Harold Bloom, this 1968 book by Paul S. Boyer, a history of vice societies in America like the New England Watch and Ward Society, can be borrowed from the Internet Archive. 

“Banned in Boston: A Conversation with Neil Miller”—This video interview with the author of the 2011 book Banned in Boston: The Watch and Ward Society’s Crusade Against Books, Burlesque, and the Social Evil is maintained by Revolutionary Spaces, a Boston-based nonprofit.