The Sister Carrie edition that was published in 1900, long regarded as a watershed work in American fiction, was actually a censored misrepresentation of Drieser's original story. When, 80 years later, the Pennsylvania Edition first appeared, replete with scholarly apparatus, it was hailed from coast to coast as a literary event of major importance. The Pennsylvania Edition restored the 36,000 words that had been excised at the insistence of the author's wife, his publisher, and a friend.
This edition contains the complete, unexpurgated text, without the scholarly apparatus, plus a new introductory essay by Thomas P. Riggio.

"In restoring Dreiser's masterpiece, the editors of the Pennsylvania Edition have given us more than a literary curiosity; like art historians cleaning a da Vinci fresco, they have uncovered the original glowing with an ancient newness." - Richard Lingeman, The Nation

"No work of such historical repute . . . has ever been republished with such major change. . . . The 'new' novel . . . will probably become the accepted standard." - Herbert Mitgang, New York Times

"The 'restored' Sister Carrie . . . is in many ways a different book, fuller, less cruel, more recognizably Dreiser's own work." - Alfred Kazin, New York Review of Books