The Red Badge of Courage & "The Veteran" by Stephen Crane

The Red Badge of Courage & "The Veteran" by Stephen Crane

First published in 1895, this small masterpiece set the pattern for the treatment of war in modern fiction. The novel is told through the eyes of Henry Fleming, a young soldier caught up in an unnamed Civil War battle who is motivated not by the unselfish heroism of conventional war stories, but by fear, cowardice, and finally, egotism. However, in his struggle to find reality amid the nightmarish chaos of war, the young soldier also discovers courage, humility, and perhaps, wisdom. Although Crane had never been in battle before writing The Red Badge of Courage, the book was widely praised by experienced soldiers for its uncanny re-creation of the sights, sounds, and sense of actual combat. Its publication brought Crane immediate international fame and established him as a major American writer. Today, nearly a century later, the book ranks as an enduring landmark of American fiction.

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	9780679783206
ISBN 10	0679783202
Title	The Red Badge of Courage & "The Veteran"
Author	Stephen Crane
Series	Modern Library Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2000-09-12
Number of pages	336
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable