Thomas P. Riggio is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. James L. W. West III is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of many books, including American Authors and the Literary Marketplace since 1900, an expansion of his 1983 Rosenbach Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

"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)