Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900)

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Stephen Crane was born the youngest of fourteen children in Newark, New Jersey. His parents were both active in current social issues, an investment that continued in much of Crane’s fiction. He supported himself as a journalist and war reporter, experiences he drew on in his short stories, most notably, “The Open Boat” (1897). He gained some notoriety after entering into a common-law marriage with Cora Taylor, a proprietor of a hotel that also served as a brothel. Together they moved to England where he died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-nine.

Throughout his short life, Crane crafted some of the finest fiction of the late nineteenth century. Crane’s work exemplifies literary Naturalism, a darker form of Realism that often positions characters as hapless victims in a cruel world. His early experiences with poverty and work as a reporter allowed him to craft realistic portrayals of life in the slums, especially in his most famous novella Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893). Crane is also well-known for his depictions of the psychology of soldiers in war in The Red Badge of Courage (1895).