Theodore Dreiser’s Russian Diary is an extended record of the American writer’s travels throughout the Soviet Union in 1927-28. Dreiser was initially invited to Moscow for a week-long observance of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. He asked, and was granted, permission to make an extended tour of the country.
This previously unpublished diary is a firsthand record of life in the USSR during the 1920s as seen by a leading American cultural figure. It is a valuable primary source, surely among the last from this period of modern history.
Circa l’autore
Thomas P. Riggio is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and managing editor of The Dreiser Edition series. James L. W. West III is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of many books, including American Authors and the Literary Marketplace since 1900, an expansion of his 1983 Rosenbach Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.