12                                      Ellen Moers

Several points in this Who's Who entry have long seemed puzz¬
ling, beginning with the fact of its existence. It certainly belies
the legend, spread by Mencken and even Dreiser himself, that
Sister Carrie sprang from the blue, a "sport" of a novel written
by a barbaric "immigrant" totally unconnected with the Ameri¬
can literary scene.

And what was the "musical magazine," correctly entitled
Ev'ry Month, that Dreiser edited from 1895 to 1897? Only half
of the Ev'ry Month mystery was dispelled when John F. Huth
opened up the .subject in 1937, for Mr. Huth had found a partial
run of the magazine (only a few more issues have turned up
since that time). Published by the sheet-music firm of which his
brother Paul was a partner, Ev'ry Month gave young Dreiser
the unique opportunity to express his philosophical and political
views in its extensive editorial columns, to react frankly to new
works by such contemporaries as Stephen Crane and Abraham
Cahan. The missing 1895 and 1896 issues of the magazine would
add considerably to our knowledge of the author of Sister
Carrie: may I seize this occasion to urge librarians and their
Friends to cooperate in the search for the elusive Ev'ry Month?

Furthermore, what sort of "prose and verse" did Dreiser con¬
tribute to various periodicals in 1897, 1898 and 1899? His bib¬
liographers, Edward .McDonald and Vrest Orton, unearthed in
1928-9 about one hundred magazine pieces published under his
byline before the publication of Sister Carrie. But their inevit¬
ably incomplete lists have never been revised, tliough new Dreiser
works of the period are constantly turning up. For example,
Columbia's manuscript article by Dreiser, "Some American
Women Painters," clearly belongs with his 1890's magazine
work; until a definitive Dreiser bibliography is prepared, we can
say with all probability, but not absolutely certainty, that the
article was never published.

For bibliophiles, the most tantalising mystery in Dreiser's first