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Holograph
Rereading the extensive correspondence between Dreiser and himself, H. L. Mencken inquired on 23 February 1943: "[O]n August 8, 1911, you speak of 'The Financier' as your fourth book and hint that there was a third running ahead of it, just after 'Jennie Gerhardt'. Did this so-called third book ever have any real existence?"[1] "In 1903," Dreiser replied, "while dreaming of doing Jennie Gerhardt, I wrote 32 chapters of what was to be The 'Genius', and in 1907 or 1908, tore them up and burned them in order to do Jennie Gerhardt, etc. etc." (Dreiser-Mencken 2: 684). In December 1910 Dreiser had begun a second version of The "Genius". In a letter to Mencken of 24 February 1911, Dreiser had stated, "I have just finished one book—Jennie Gerhardt—and am half through with another [The "Genius"]" (Dreiser-Mencken 1: 63). He added that he expected to continue "this book game" until he had written four or five, "after which unless I am enjoying a good income from them I will quit." "Give the game a fair trial: you have got the goods," Mencken advised, "and soon or late the fact will penetrate the skulls of those who have anything within. . . . The money be damned" (Dreiser-Mencken 1: 64). Dreiser answered, "I sometimes think my desire is for expression that is entirely too frank for this time—hence that I must pay the price of being unpalatable. The next book [The "Genius"] will tell" (10 March 1911, Dreiser-Mencken 1: 65).[2]
On 24 March 1911, Dreiser wrote Mary Annabel Fanton Roberts, who had helped to edit Jennie Gerhardt, that The "Genius" was "nearing completion."[3] On 10 April, he wrote Mencken that he hoped to conclude the manuscript by 1 May, noting on 17 April that it "draws to a close. Its grim, I'm sorry to state, but life-like" (Dreiser-Mencken 1: 67). On 28 April he mentioned to Mencken that he was "finishing" The "Genius" (Dreiser-Mencken 1: 71). "I completed the third book sometime ago—The Genius— 425,000 words," he wrote Mrs. Roberts on 26 June (UPDC). And to Mencken on 8 August he wrote, "Yes, book three is done & being typewritten slowly" (Dreiser-Mencken 1: 73). The typing must have progressed at a glacial pace. Though in a 15 October letter to William C. Lengel, formerly an editorial assistant of Dreiser's on the Delineator, Dreiser claimed that The "Genius" was "now lying on ice, all nicely typewritten," on 17 October he informed Margery Dell that he was still awaiting part of the typescript and on the same day assured Mencken that the full typescript would soon be ready for him.[4] After the abortive start which Dreiser later recalled as an event of
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