Maggie by Stephen Crane

Maggie by Stephen Crane

Regular price
Checking stock...
Regular price
Checking stock...
The feel-good place to buy books
  • Free UK delivery over £5
  • 10% off preloved books when you join +Plus
  • Buying preloved emits 46% less CO2 than new
  • Give your books a new home - sell them back to us!

Maggie by Stephen Crane

A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil's Row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him. His infantile countenance was livid with fury. His small body was writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths. Run, Jimmie, run Dey'll get yehs, screamed a retreating Rum Alley child. Naw, responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, dese micks can't make me run. Howls of renewed wrath went up from Devil's Row throats. Tattered gamins on the right made a furious assault on the gravel heap. On their small, convulsed faces there shone the grins of true assassins. As they charged, they threw stones and cursed in shrill chorus. The little champion of Rum Alley stumbled precipitately down the other side. His coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle, and his hat was gone. He had bruises on twenty parts of his body, and blood was dripping from a cut in his head. His wan features wore a look of a tiny, insane demon. On the ground, children from Devil's Row closed in on their antagonist. He crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with cursing fury. The little boys ran to and fro, dodging, hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles.
STEPHEN CRANE was born, the fourteenth child of a Methodist minister, in Newark, New Jersey, on November 1, 1871. Writ-ing was an occupation encouraged in Crane's family; two of his brothers became newspapermen. Crane himself began turning out stories at the age of eight. In 1890, following the deaths of both parents, Crane moved to New York City where, to support himself, he worked as a freelance newspaper writer. His first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, which Crane had begun at college, was published pseudonymously in 1893, when he was only twenty-one (Crane had had to borrow money from his brother to pay for its initial printing). Reviewers at the time found Maggie, a penetrating look at New York slum life, too cruel, and the book sold poorly. Crane's first literary success came in 1895 with The Red Badge of Courage.

Crane's travels and experiences during the later 1890s as a war correspondent -- he was sent to the combat areas of Mex-ico, Greece, and Cuba -- furnished rich material for other sto-ries, including The Open Boat (based partly on Crane's own experience of shipwreck off the coast of Florida) and The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, whose blend of realism and romanticism earned the praise of William Dean Howells, Theodore Dreiser, and other American realists.

Crane also published two volumes of poetry, The Black Rider and Other Lines (1895) and War Is Kind (1899), which dramatized his rebellion against New England Calvinism and conservative evangelical Christianity. Spumed or ignored by the critics of his own country, Crane traveled with his wife-to--be to England, where The Red Badge of Courage was greatly admired, and where he made the acquaintance of such literary giants as Henry James (another American emigre) and Joseph Conrad.

Crane's adventuresome and roving lifestyle seriously under-mined his health; after fruitless efforts to obtain a cure, he died of tuberculosis in Badenweiler, Germany, on June 5, 1900, at the age of twenty-eight.

Stephen Crane published other novels and several vol-umes of short stories, including George's Mother (1896), The Third Violet (1897), The Monster and Other Stories (1899), and Whilomville Stories (1900).

SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9781517158811
ISBN 10 1517158818
Title Maggie
Author Stephen Crane
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Year published 2015-09-01
Number of pages 40
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.