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Encyclopedia entry: Crane, Stephen
- Article from:
- The Oxford Companion to American Literature
- Author:
Copyright© The Oxford Companion to American Literature 1995, originally published by Oxford University Press 1995. (Hide copyright information)
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Crane, Stephen
(1871–1900), born in New Jersey, spent most of his youth in upstate New York; he attended Lafayette College and Syracuse University, each for a year, before moving to New York City to become a struggling author and do intermittent reporting for the
Herald
and
Tribune
. His first book,
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
(1893), was too grim to find a regular publisher, and remained unsold even when Crane borrowed from his brother to issue it privately. Early in 1893, with no personal experience of war, deriving his knowledge primarily from reading Tolstoy and
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War
, he wrote
The Red Badge of Courage
(1895), his great realistic study of the mind ...