Stephen Crane Biography

American Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Poet, Journalist

Mar 1, 2009 Tel Asiado

A brief biography of writer and poet Stephen Crane, well-known for his use of realism in his works.

American novelist Stephen Crane is best known for his classic book The Red Badge of Courage. His use of realism in his stories immensely influenced future American writers.

The Early Years of Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey on November 1, 1871, the 14th child and the youngest, of a Methodist minister, Reverend Townley Crane, and Mary Helen Peck Crane.

The young Stephen began writing when he was 8, and at 16 he wrote articles for the New York Tribune. His literary career started to flourish when he studied at Syracuse University, New York, in 1890.

Crane began writing at an early age, publishing several articles by the time he was 16. While supporting himself as a freelance journalist, he lived among the poor in the Bowery slums to research his novel, Maggie: a Girl of the Streets, which was completed when he was 22.

Crane had to print the book at his own expense as publishers found its realism too ugly, but critics considered it a work of American literary naturalism.

Stephen Crane's Novel The Red Badge of Courage

At 24, author Stephen Crane completed his most important work, The Red Badge of Courage, a novel about the horrors of the American Civil War. It's notable that Crane wrote the novel without any actual battle experience. The Red Badge of Courage won him international acclaim.

The success of The Red Badge of Courage, which became a classic of American literature, led to his assignments as a war correspondent. During the last half of the 1890s, Crane traveled to Mexico, to Greece to cover the Greco-Turkish War, and to Cuba to report on the Spanish-American War.

Last Years of Crane

In 1896, Stephen Crane was shipwrecked for several days. This experience inspired his short story titled The Open Boat.

During these years, Crane refined his use of realism in part to expose social ills at that time, poverty and war. He also completed George's Mother, detailing life in the Bowery. A year later he published Active Service, a novel based on the Greco-Turkish War.

Crane settled in England after the war in Cuba. He contracted tuberculosis and died at the young age of only 28, June 5, 1900. His work was neglected for many years after his death; it was ultimately rediscovered by other writers such as Amy Lowell and Willa Cather.

Works by Stephen Crane

• Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, 1893
• The Black Riders, 1895
• The Red Badge of Courage, 1895
• George's Mother, 1896
• The Open Boat and Other Tales, 1898
• War is Kind, 1899
• Active Service, 1899
• Wounds in the Rain, 1900
• The O'Ruddy (completed by Robert Barr), 1903, published after he died

Sources:

• Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Edinburgh: Chambers, Harrap Publishers, 2002.
• Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring. New York: Larousse, 1994.
• The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English by Ian Ousby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

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Stephen Crane, Novelist, Story-Writer, Poet

Crane's The Red Badge of Courage 1st Edn. Cover