Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane was an American novelist, short-story writer, poet and journalist whose brief career had a substantial influence on modern American literature. Born in 1871, he became associated with literary realism, naturalism and impressionism, using compressed prose, vivid imagery and psychological observation to depict fear, poverty, violence and social isolation. His major works include Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, The Monster, “The Open Boat,” “The Blue Hotel” and “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky.” Crane also reported on the Greco-Turkish and Spanish-American wars before dying from tuberculosis in 1900, aged twenty-eight.

Crane’s principal historical novel is The Red Badge of Courage, set during the American Civil War and centred on Henry Fleming, a young Union soldier confronting terror, cowardice and his desire to prove himself in battle. Crane was born after the war and had never experienced combat when he wrote it, yet the novel became celebrated for its psychological realism. The O’Ruddy is also historical fiction: an eighteenth-century adventure following an impoverished Irish gentleman travelling through English society. Crane left the novel unfinished at his death, and Robert Barr completed it for posthumous publication in 1903. The Civil War stories collected in The Little Regiment and Other Episodes of the American Civil War are also historical fiction, although the book is a story collection rather than a novel.