Black Lamb

A Week in Literary History

November 1st, 2002

American author Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage, 1895) is born in 1871 in Newark, N.J.

Stephen Crane, b. November 1, 1871 d. 1900

Crane was the most successful and talked-about writer in the English language before he was twenty-five years old, thanks to the best-selling status of Maggie and The Red Badge of Courage. But a self-destructive urge wrecked his health and he was dead at twenty-eight, his best work already several years behind him. His status as one of the founders of realism in fiction stands, however, as does the poetic beauty of Red Badge, an unprecedented novel that changed forever the way war was written and thought about.

Suggested Reading Novels and novellas Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, 1893. The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War, 1895. The Monster, 1898. Short stories The Little Regiment and Other Episodes of the American Civil War, 1896. The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure, 1898. Whilomville Stories, 1900. Wounds in the Rain: War Stories, 1900. Poetry The Black Riders, 1895. War Is Kind, 1899.

Posted by: The Editors
Category: A Week in Literary History, Books and Authors | Link to this Entry