Read complete books and articles on: Stephen Crane

Crane, Stephen - 1871–1900, American novelist, poet, and short-story writer, b. Newark, N.J. Often designated the first modern American writer, Crane is ranked among the authors who introduced realism into American literature. The 14th child of a Methodist minister, he grew up in Port Jervis, N.Y., and briefly attended Lafayette College and Syracuse Univ. He moved to New York City in 1890

His first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), a grimly realistic story of slum life, was unpopular but gained the young writer the friendship of Hamlin Garland and William Dean Howells. Crane's next novel, The Red Badge of Courage (1895, restored ed. 1982), brought him wide and deserved fame. Set during the Civil War, the novel traces the development of a young recruit, Henry Fleming, through fear, illusion, panic, and cowardice, to a quiet, humble heroism. This remarkable account of the emotions of a soldier under fire is all the more amazing since Crane had never been in battle. On the strength of the novel he served as a foreign correspondent in Cuba and in Greece.

Around 1897 Crane married Cora Taylor, who ran a brothel in Florida. His marriage, coupled with his unorthodox personality, aroused scandalous rumors, including those that he was a drug addict and a satanist. Because of this slander Crane spent his last years abroad; he died of tuberculosis in Germany at the age of 28.

Crane was a superb literary stylist who emphasized irony and paradox and made innovative use of imagery and symbolism. Thus, although realistic, his novels are highly individual. Crane also wrote superb short stories and poems. The title stories of The Open Boat and Other Tales (1898) and The Monster and Other Stories (1899) are considered among the finest stories in English. His two books of epigrammatic free verse, The Black Rider (1895) and War Is Kind (1899), anticipated several strains of 20th-century poetry.

See his works, ed. by F. Bowers (10 vol., 1969–76); letters, ed. by S. Wertheim and P. Sorrentino (2 vol., 1988); biographies by J. Berryman (1950, repr. 1975), R. W. Stallman (1968), and L. H. Davis (1998); studies by M. Holton (1972), R. M. Weatherford, ed. (1973), F. Bergon (1975), D. Halliburton (1989), and C. Benfey (1992); bibliography by R. W. Stallman (1972).

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15 of the Best Books and Articles on: Stephen Crane

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

A Stephen Crane Encyclopedia » Read Now
by Stanley Wertheim. 415 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

The publication of The Red Badge of Courage in 1895 brought Stephen Crane instant fame at age 23. At 28, he was dead. In the brief span of his literary career, Crane enjoyed a significant measure of renown as well as notoriety, but his reputation rested almost entirely upon his war novel, and he...
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The publication of The Red Badge of Courage in 1895 brought Stephen Crane instant fame at age 23. At 28, he was dead. In the brief span of his literary career, Crane enjoyed a significant measure of renown as well as notoriety, but his reputation rested almost entirely upon his war novel, and he felt that his talent had ultimately been misjudged. To this day, most educated American readers know him only as the author of the most realistic Civil War novel ever written, three or four action-packed short stories, and a handful of iconoclastic free-verse poems. This reference book provides a more complete picture of Crane's short but furiously creative life and encourages a more extensive appreciation of his works. Entries are provided for works, characters, persons, and other topics related to his life and writing, and many entries list sources of additional information. The volume also includes a chronology and a bibliography of the most important studies about Crane.
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2.

Stephen Crane » Read Now
by John Berryman. 352 pgs.

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...FENIMORE COOPER by JAMES GROSSMAN STEPHEN CRANE by JOHN BERRYMAN JONATHAN...Frances Cabane Scovel Saportas Stephen Crane on the Three Friends off Cuba, 1898 Stephen Crane...
3.

The Red Badge of Courage, and Other Stories » Read Now
by Stephen Crane. 194 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Courage and Other Stories By STEPHEN CRANE With an Introduction by DANIEL...from R. W. Stallman, ed., Stephen Crane: An Omnibus New York, 1952...the time he was twenty- two...
4.

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets; & George's Mother: Two Novels » Read Now
by Stephen Crane. 160 pgs.

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...General Editor Two NOVELS BY STEPHEN CRANE MAGGIE: A Girl of the Streets...INTRODUCTION IT WAS on the Bowery, Stephen Crane said once, that he got his "artistic...the...
5.

The Poetry of Stephen Crane » Read Now
by Daniel Hoffman. 304 pgs.

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...The Poetry of Stephen Crane The Poetry of STEPHEN CRANE By DANIEL HOFFMAN New York and London COLUMBIA...Columbia University Press. PREFACE The week after Stephen Crane...
6.

Stephen Crane: A Study in American Letters » Read Now
by Thomas Beer. 250 pgs.

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...STEPHEN CRANE A STUDY IN AMERICAN LETTERS THE...PERCY HAMMOND, New York Tribune . STEPHEN CRANE A STUDY IN AMERICAN LETTERS BY...had never expected the biography of...
7.

"Distributing the News": War Journalism as Metaphor for Language in Stephen Crane's Fiction, in Studies in American Fiction » Read Now
by William Crisman. 21 pgs.

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...presumably felt a need to authenticate his novel". Stephen Crane, Journalism, and the Making of Modern American...ineffectual by excessive imagination" from journalism. "...
8.

Understanding The Red Badge of Courage: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents » Read Now
by Claudia Durst Johnson. 214 pgs.

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Every generation of readers has interpreted the meaning of The Red Badge of Courage anew. Its appeal is both historical and universal--historical in its Civil War setting and universal in its relating of the experiences of a young man who is thrust into a situation he does not understand and cannot...
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Every generation of readers has interpreted the meaning of The Red Badge of Courage anew. Its appeal is both historical and universal--historical in its Civil War setting and universal in its relating of the experiences of a young man who is thrust into a situation he does not understand and cannot cope with. This collection of historical documents, collateral readings, and commentary will promote interdisciplinary study of the novel and enrich the reader's understanding of its themes and historical context. A wide variety of more than 40 primary documents and firsthand accounts brings to life the Civil War experiences of leaders and soldiers of the Union and Confederacy, especially in the Battle of Chancellorsville, which is the setting for the novel. Carefully selected memoirs, poems, short stories, newspaper articles, and interviews illuminate the historical setting, the themes of cowardice and desertion, battlefield experiences, the soldier's life in camp, and the issue of pacifism as it relates to The Red Badge of Courage as an antiwar novel.
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9.

Barron's Simplified Approach to The Red Badge of Courage: Stephen Crane » Read Now
by Robert L. Gale. 114 pgs.

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10.

Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, in Explicator » Read Now
by Louis A. Renza. 3 pgs.

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...In certain ways, Stephen Cranes The Red...manuscript evidence, that Crane frames his protagonists...blocks an artist like Crane, who as a correspondent...Cox, James M. "On...
11.

Disabling Fictions: Race, History, and Ideology in Crane's "The Monster," in Studies in American Fiction » Read Now
by Price McMurray. 22 pgs.

Collections: History, Literature, Entire Library

...days of the Revolution and the Stephen Crane who was a member of the Continental...Monster," see R. W. Stallman, Stephen Crane: A Critical Bibliography (Ames...1972), and...
12.

The Virtues of the Vicious: Jacob Riis, Stephen Crane, and the Spectacle of the Slum (Chap. 2 "Crane and Slum Fiction") » Read Now
by Keith Gandal. 224 pgs.

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In this compelling work, Keith Gandal reveals how the slum in nineteenth-century America, long a topic for sober moral analysis, became in the 1890s an unprecedented source of spectacle, captured in novels, newspapers, documentary accounts, and photographs. Reflecting a change in the middle-class...
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In this compelling work, Keith Gandal reveals how the slum in nineteenth-century America, long a topic for sober moral analysis, became in the 1890s an unprecedented source of spectacle, captured in novels, newspapers, documentary accounts, and photographs. Reflecting a change in the middle-class vision of the poor, the slum no longer drew attention simply as a problem of social conditions and vice but emerged as a subject for aesthetic, ethnographic, and psychological description. From this period dates the fascination with the "colorful" alternative customs and ethics of slum residents, and an emphasis on nurturing their self-esteem. Middle-class portrayals of slum life as "strange and dangerous" formed part of a broad turn-of-the-century quest for masculinity, Gandal argues, a response to a sentimental Victorian respectability perceived as stifling. These changes in middle-class styles for representing the urban poor signalled a transformation in middle- class ethics and a reconception of subjectivity. Developing a broad cultural context for the 1890s interest in the poor, Gandal also offers close, groundbreaking analysis of two of the period's crucial texts. Looking at Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives (1890), Gandal documents how Riis's use of ethnographic and psychological details challenged traditional moralist accounts and helped to invent a spectacular style of documentation that still frames our approach as well as our solutions to urban problems. Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) pushed ethnographic and psychological analysis even farther, representing a human interiority centered around self-image as opposed to character and exploring not only different customs but a radically different ethics in New York's Bowery--what we would call today a "culture of poverty." Gandal meanwhile demonstrates how both Riis's innovative "touristic" approach and Crane's "bohemianism" bespeak a romanticization of slum life and an emerging middle-class unease with its own values and virility. With framing discussion that relates slum representations of the 1890s to those of today, and featuring a new account of the Progressive Era response to slum life, The Virtues of the Vicious makes fresh, provocative reading for Americanists and those interested in the 1890s, issues of urban representation and reform, and the history of New York City.
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13.

Fact, Not Fiction: Questioning Our Assumptions about Crane's "The Open Boat," in Studies in Short Fiction » Read Now
by Stefanie Bates Eye. 12 pgs.

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...Bates Eye In January 1897, Stephen Crane was shipwrecked and lost at sea...literary creations" (Fishkin 4). Stephen Crane was one of these journalists...scholars profess to...
14.

Cora Crane: A Biography of Mrs. Stephen Crane » Read Now
by Lillian Gilkes. 416 pgs.

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...CORA CRANE Cora and Stephen Crane at the benefit party held in...Crane A Biography of Mrs. Stephen Crane by Lillian Gilkes DISCARD...Cora Taylors association with Stephen...
15.

Ernest Skinner, Henry James, and the Death of Stephen Crane: A Cora Crane Inscription, in ANQ » Read Now
by Peter Miles. 8 pgs.

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...Henry James, and the Death of Stephen Crane: A Cora Crane Inscription The novelist Stephen Crane died in a sanatorium at Badenweiler...way away. In particular, when...