BIRSS: Stephen Crane and The Red Badge of Courage

After self-publishing Maggie: A Girl of the Streets in 1893, Crane worked as a freelance writer. During that time he was befriended by fellow writers Hamlin Garland and William Dean Howells, who encouraged him to keep writing. Even still, The Red Badge of Courage was not easy to place, leaving Crane to initially syndicate it in serial form in various newspapers and magazines. When it finally published in 1895, the novel brought Crane international fame, even though it didn't relieve his ongoing financial difficulties. Although he had never been exposed to war first-hand, he was praised by veterans for accurately depicting physical combat and the fears associated with war, while some critics were less complimentary about his modernistic approach to the subject.

Following Crane's success with his novel about war, he became a war correspondent and traveled to Greece and Cuba, writing for the New York World as well as The New York Journal. His departure to Cuba in 1897 was disastrous: the ship he sailed on, the Commodore, wrecked off the coast of Florida, stranding Crane and three other passengers in a dingy for nearly thirty hours. From that experience, he composed his famous short story "The Open Boat."

In 1900, weakened by the recurrent malarial fever he'd caught in Cuba, the twenty-eight-year-old Craned died from tuberculosis. Despite his short life, Crane had become central to the literary world. He regularly corresponded with other important writers of his time period, most notably: Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, Ford Maddox Ford, and Henry James. The New York Times described the cohort as "neighbors, friends, collaborators, and enemies."

Stephen Crane in his study at Brede Place, Sussex, England (1899)

Source: Stephen Crane Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries