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Stephen Crane, (1871-1900), was an American novelist and poet, one of the first American writers of the naturalistic style of writing, Crane is known for his pessimistic and often brutal portrayals of the human condition, but his stark realism is relieved by poetic charm and a sympathetic understanding of character. Born in Newark New Jersey, and the son of a Methodist minister, Crane began work in 1891, in New York City, as a freelance reporter in the slums. The job provided him with material for his first novel, Maggie, a Girl of the Streets written in 1893, a work that won praise from American writers Hamlin Garland and William Dean Howells—also naturalistic writers--but weren’t as popular or successful as Crane. Crane's next novel, The Red Badge of Courage, written in 1895, and gained international recognition as a penetrating and realistic psychological study of a young soldier in the American Civil War. In addition to being a novelist, journalist, and short-story writer, Crane was also an innovator in free verse techniques (irregular verse).
Crane died at the age of twenty-eight and a half of tuberculosis. Although he died at such a
. . .
Biographical Dictionary of American Literature. Although Crane did run into criticism, one of the biggest was the Dial controversy (Angel 98). ” (Knapp 4)
One would have to conclude that Stephen Crane was ahead of his time to be able to write such moving material at such a young age. However, Stephen Crane and his book would encounter many more controversies from the patriotic finger pointers in America (Mitchell 15-20). The Red Badge of Courage depicted a young recruit under fire and told of his journey along the bloodied Civil War trail, which was uncharacteristic of previous literature and excepted by the masses (Bailey and Kennedy 586). The good sense of Brooks' letter ended the Dial controversy and left The Red Badge of Courage intact.
tenth edition, volume I & 2, Lexington: D. Thomas Beer points out The Red Badge of Courage as illustrating better than any of Crane’s works that his search for “aesthetic was governed by terror and no one since Poe has evoked that emotion”(Haycraft and Kunitz 189).
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