The widespread perception of the role of women in Dreiser's life is that he had an unquenchable desire for short-lived sexual relationships which on the whole distracted him from his work. As H. L. Mencken pointedly remarked in his memoirs, “I soon learned that women occupied an enormous place in his life—a place, indeed, that seemed to me, and to many others, to be inordinate. I sometime wondered how, with four or five intrigues going on at once, he found time for his really heavy stint of daily writing.”

Although biographical accounts of Dreiser published before the mid-1960s occasionally noted his penchant for female companionship, the subject was generally avoided, given the conventions of the day regarding the reporting of the private lives of public figures—this despite the revelations provided by Helen Dreiser's My Life with Dreiser (1951). But with the publication in 1965 of W. A. Swanberg's Dreiser the lid came off. Swanberg, a diligent researcher, uncovered and recounted scores of relationships. Because some of the women involved were still alive, he occasionally used pseudonyms or only hinted at the full nature of a relationship, but the overwhelming impact of his relentless enumeration of Dreiser's seemingly countless relationships with women—from one-night stands to affairs of many years—was to establish Dreiser as a figure whose goal of sexual satisfaction both preoccupied him to an extraordinary degree and frequently led to the exploitation of the many women in his life. Other Dreiser biographies since Swanberg's have dealt less fulsomely with this aspect of Dreiser's life, but the pall cast by Swanberg's account still hangs over Dreiser's reputation. In one sense, this reputation was well-earned. There is no denying the large number of women Dreiser was sexually involved with (often several simultaneously) over the last 35 years of his life, from his breakup with Sara Dreiser in 1910 until his death. But in another sense, there is far more to the story than sheer numbers.

The basis for a fuller and more accurate perception of the nature and meaning of Dreiser's relationships with women has been greatly enhanced since Swanberg's biography. Dreiser's American Diaries (1982) and his Letters to Women (2009), both superbly edited by Thomas Riggio, offer a richer appreciation than earlier available of his self-conception as a lover.