Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane was born in 1871 in the United States. He began writing at the age of only four and, by the time he was in his mid-teens, had already published several articles and stories. Uninterested in university, he got a job as a newspaper reporter in 1891 but also continued publishing his own work. His first novel, ‘Maggie: A Girl of the Streets’, came out in 1893 and is now considered the first work of realism published in America. The 'Red Badge of Courage’, which made Crane internationally famous, followed two years later and was remarkable for its vivid descriptions of battle scenes of the American Civil War (1861-65), although the young author had never seen military action. Stephen Crane attracted great media attention in 1895, when he appeared as a witness for a suspected prostitute in a case of false arrest. He was advised not to get involved, but helped anyway. He was laughed at by the newspapers and his apartment was searched by the police. Although his evidence was important in the girl winning the case, his reputation was ruined. On his way to report on the Spanish-American War in early 1897, Crane’s ship sank near Cuba and he had to spend several days in stormy seas on a dinghy. He wrote about this experience in his most famous short story, ‘The Open Boat’. In the few years until his death from tuberculosis in 1900, at the age of twenty-eight, Crane reported on other wars and wrote short stories. He was always struggling with debt and, even as he lay dying, was working on material for a new novel. Today, he is regarded as one of the greatest authors of American literature.