STEVEN CRANE'S THE RED BADGE OF
             COURAGE AFFECTED PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF THE CIVIL WAR?
             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 young age his literature had a profound affect on the world. 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). When Crane signed a contract with D. Appleton and Co. to publish The Red Badge of Courage, he was not well-known enough to command an advance, and agreed to a flat 10 per cent royalty on the retail price of all copies sold (McPherson, 5). Published in the autumn of 1895, the book went through two editions before the end of the year. By March of 1896 the novel was in eighth place on the international books...