Stephen Crane was born, in 1871, in Newark, New Jersey. Raised in a strict Methodist household, he rebelled Openly, developing a strong and lasting attraction to the vices his parents had condemned. He attempted college twice, the second time failing a theme-writing course while writing articles for newspapers such as the New York Tribune. In 1892 Crane moved to the poverty of New York City’s Lower East Side–the Bowery so vividly depicted in Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. Destitute and depressed after the initial failure of that book, Crane had almost decided to abandon his writing and find a... Read More

This harrowing tale of a young girl in the slums is a searing portrayal of turn-of-the-century New York, and Stephen Crane's most innovative work. Published in 1893, when the author was just twenty-one, it broke new ground with its vivid characters, its brutal naturalism, and its empathic rendering of the lives... Read more

Not yet famous for his Civil War masterpiece, The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane was unable to find a publisher for his brilliant Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, finally printing it himself in 1893.
Condemned and misunderstood during Crane’s lifetime, this starkly realistic story of a pretty child of the... Read more

One of the greatest works of American literature, The Red Badge of Courage gazes fearlessly into the bright hell of war through the eyes of one young soldier, the reluctant Henry Fleming. Written by Stephen Crane at the age of twenty-one, the novel imagines the Civil War's terror and loss with... Read more

First published in 1895, America's greatest novel  of the Civil War was written before 21-year-old  Stephen Crane had "smelled even the powder of a  sham battle." But this powerful psychological  study of a young soldier's struggle with the  horrors, both within and without, that war strikes the  reader with its undeniable realism and with its  masterful descriptions of... Read more

These four landmark novels of nineteenth-century American literature have gained a permanent place in our culture as great classics. They are not only part of our national heritage, but masterpieces of world literature whose deep and lasting influence is felt to this day.

The Scarlet Letter vividly records America’s moral and historical... Read more