In his realistic depiction of the thwarted aspirations and unfulfilled hungers of the turn-of-the-century American underclass, Theodore Dreiser was a socially-conscious writer far ahead of his time. Dawn, the journalist-turned-novelist's brutally candid autobiography of his first nineteen years, was composed between 1912 and 1915, but withheld by Dreiser due to his misgivings about the potential impact of its frank revelations, daring...