The history of the vicissitudes attendant upon the suppression, in 1901, of Sister Carrie is part of the history of America's emergence from the then prevailing atmosphere of prudery and suspicion. Fear of realism in the novel prompted the campaign against writers who dared challenge the romantic tradition. On the score of his uncompromising fight against censorship and for the new and rising school of American naturalism, Theodore Dreiser earned the right to be regarded as a pioneer and liberator. His Sister Carrie was the forerunner of a tendency in American fiction for at least a quarter of a century and even today it remains a monumental achievement as a novel of great sympathy, tenderness and unremitting naturalness. For these qualities alone Theodore Dreiser became internationally famous.