The University of Pennsylvania Dreiser edition

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 a 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 This previously unpublished diary is a firsthand record of life in the USSR during the 1920s as seen by a leading American cultural figure.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.

Dreiser's second novel and his own personal favorite features an impoverished heroine who, in simply trying to make her way in the world, inadvertently defies a host of social conventions.