A turn toward the vocation of popular novelist assured Dixon of lasting fame beginning with the publication of The Leopard’s Spots in 1902. Selling more than a hundred thousand copies in only its first few months, the book, along with its sequel The Clansman and a hit play based on the novels, established Dixon as the major interpreter of southern history to the nation. Dixon enjoyed continuing commercial success with a trail of novels in the first two decades of the century, but his work gained even more notoriety when he cooperated in turning his early novels into the pioneering film "The Birth of a Nation", directed by D. W. Griffith. As his career moved past its peak, Dixon continued to be a prolific author, contributing to anti-communist literature in particular, before closing his life as a struggling civil servant in his home state.

Dixon’s life has attracted the attention of several scholars in recent years, but the only full-length studies of him are now decades old. More typically, writers single out Dixon only to illustrate briefly the severe racism of the turn-of-the-century South. His racist views have been explained by some using a psychosexual scheme, but new perspectives may be in order when one analyzes Dixon in the full context of his broader views for much of the first half of his life and of his widespread respectability during his lifetime. Little attention has been paid to his importance as a proponent of urban social reform through Christianity or to his nationwide prominence as a lecturer.