Stephen Crane Biography and List of Works

American author, whose second book, THE RED BANDGE OF COURAGE (1895), brought him international fame. Crane's first novel, MAGGIE: A GIRL OF THE STREETS, was a milestone in the development of literary naturalism. At its appearance in 1893 Crane was 22 years old. His manuscript was turned down by the publishers, who considered its realism too 'ugly'. Crane had to print the book at his own expense, borrowing the money from his brother. The descent of a slum girl into prostitution was first published under a pseudonym. The book was generally ignored but it won the admiration of other realist writers.

"At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage."
(from The Red Badge of Courage, 1895)

Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey, as the 14th child of a Methodist minister. He started to write stories at the age of eight and at 16 he was writing articles for the New York Tribune. Both of his parents did some writing and two of his brothers became newspapermen. Crane studied at Lafayette College and Syracuse University. After his mother's death in 1890 - his father had died earlier - Crane moved in New York, where he lived a bohemian life, and worked as a free-lance writer and journalist. While supporting himself by his writings, he lived among the poor in the Bowery slums to research his first novel, Maggie.

The Red Badge of Courage depicted the American Civil War from the point of view of an ordinary soldier. It has been called the first modern war novel. Crane's collection of poems, THE BLACK RIDER, which appeared also in 1895, has much in common with Emily Dickinson's simple, stripped style. These books brought Crane better reporting assignments and he sought experiences as a war correspondent in combat areas. Crane travelled to Greece, Cuba, Texas and Mexico, reporting mostly on war events. His short story, 'The Open Boat,' is based on a true experience, when his ship sank on the journey to Cuba in 1896. With a small party of other passengers, Crane spent several days drifting in an open boat before being rescued. This experience impaired his health permanently.

  When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers.
   Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot at he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: 'Yes, but I love myself.'
(from The Open Boat')

In Greece Crane wrote about the Greco-Turkish War, settling in 1898 to Sussex, England, where he lived with the author Cora Taylor, who was proprietress of a well-known Jacksonville brothel. In England Crane became friends with Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, and Henry James. During these restless years Crane refined his use of realism to expose social ills, as in GEORGE'S MOTHER (1896), which explored life in the Bowery. In 1899 appeared ACTIVE SERVICE, which was based on the Greco-Turkish War.

In 1899 Crane returned to Cuba, to cover the Spanish-American War. Due to poor health he was obliged to return to England. Crane died on June 5, 1900 at Badenweiler in Germany of tuberculosis, which was worsened by malarial fever he had caught in Cuba. His posthumous publications include the sketches and stories from his life as a correspondent in WOUNDS IN THE RAIN (1900) and WHILOMVILLE STORIES (1900), depicting a childhood in a small state. After Crane's death his work was neglected for many years until such writers as Amy Lowell and Willa Cather brought it again to public attention. Crane's works introduced into American literature realism, although his innovations in technique and style and use of symbolism gave much of his best work a romantic rather than a naturalistic quality.

The Red Badge of Courage (1895) - The story is set during the American Civil War. Henry Fleming enrols as a soldier in the Union army. His expectations of the glory of the fight are undermined by his first encounter with the enemy. During the second encounter he flees from the battle, but fails to justify his desertion in his own eyes. He returns to the lines with the wounded, marked by the 'red badge' of a soldier who has fought but does not tell anyone how he received his wound. Back with his regiment, in the heat of the battle, he picks up the regiment's colours when they fall from another's hands. He is filled with the guilt and haunted by the memory of a soldier, who was deserted on the field.

The Blue Hotel (1898) - Short story, first published serially in Collier's Weekly. Three visitors enter at Pat Scully's hotel in Fort Romper, they search a haven of rest in a blizzard. Swede is a nervous New Yorker, Bill is a Westerner and reserved. Mr. Blanc is from the East. The Swede drinks heavily and he beats Scully's son, Johnnie, after accusing him of cheating at cards. When the Swede accosts a patron of a bar, he is stabbed and killed. Several moths later Mr. Blanc confesses to Bill that Johnnie indeed cheated. He feels responsible for the death.

For further reading: Stephen Crane by Robert W. Stallman (1968); Stephen Crane by Edwin Harrison Cady (1980); Realism, Writing, Disfiguration: On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane by Michael Fried (1988); Red Badge of Courage: Redefining the Hero by Donald B. Gibson (1988); The Crane Log: A Documentary Life of Stephen Crane 1871-1900 by Stanley Wertheim, Paul Sorrentino (1994); The Pluralistic Philosophy of Stephen Crane by Patrick K. Dooley (1994); Stephen Crane, Journalism, and the Making of Modern American Literature by Michael Robertson (1997); Badge of Courage: The Life of Stephen Crane by Linda H. Davis (1998); Readings on Stephen Crane, ed. by Bonnie Szumski (1998); Understanding The Red Badge of Courage by Claudia D. Johnson (1998)

American Civil War in fiction: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians by Ambroce Bierce (1891); The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895); Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936); The Unvanisquished by William Faulkner (1938); The History of Rome, Hanks and Kindred Matters by Joseph Stanley Pennell (1944); When the War is Over by Stephen Becker (1970); Roots by Alex Haley (1976); Shiloh by Shelby Foote (1976); Marching Home by Donald Honing (1980); Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganis (1989)

MAGGIE: A GIRL OF THE STREETS, (1893)
THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, (1895)
GEORGE'S MOTHER, (1896)
THE BLUE HOTEL, (1896)
THE LITTLE REGIMENT, (1896)
THE BRIDE COMES TO YELLOW SKY, (1896)
THE THIRD VIOLET, (1897)
THE OPEN BOAT, (1898)
ACTIVE SERVICE, (1899)
THE MONSTER AND OTHER STORIES, (1899)
WAR IS KIND, (1899)
WOUNDS IN THE RAIN, (1900)
WHILOMVILLE STORIES, (1900)
MEN, WOMEN AND BOATS, (1921)
COLLECTED WORKS, 12 VOL., (1925)
LETTERS, (1960)
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF STEPHEN CRANE, (1988)