The Sins of the Father, critical edition

" Today, Thomas Dixon is perhaps best known as the author of the best-selling early twentieth-century trilogy that included the novel The Clansman (1905), which provided the core narrative for D.W. Griffith's groundbreaking and still-controversial film The Birth of a Nation. It was The Sins of the Father , however, that Dixon regarded as the most aesthetically satisfying child of his Ku Klux Klan saga. In this novel he telescopes the trilogy's sprawling historical canvas into one tightly scripted narrative. A best-seller in 1912, the novel's themes of interracial sex and incest outraged many upon its publication.

A century later, Dixon's work is undergoing a critical reevaluation. A new introduction by Steven Weisenburger lends a valuable historical and critical perspective to this important and divisive classic of American literature.