The Open Boat

Stephen Crane

Four men struggle for survival after escaping from a sinking ship and into a small open boat.

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Tales of New York

Stephen Crane, Larzer Ziff (Editor, Introduction by), Theo Davis (Contributor)

“A powerful, severe, and harshly comic portrayal of Irish immigrant life in lower New York exactly a century ago.”—Alfred Kazin.

Although fellow novelists William Dean Howells and Hamlin Garland immediately recognized genius in the twenty-one-year-old author of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, in 1893 most readers were unwilling to accept its unconventional theme and were uneasy with a style that was at once darkly naturalistic and vividly impressionistic. Today Maggie is esteemed as an American classic, the first of an impressive group of works in which Crane explored the underside of urban life, portraying the rise of the metropolis as it alters not just the human environment but human nature itself.

This volume includes “George’s Mother” and eleven other tales and sketches of New York written between 1892 and 1896. Together in their dignified realism these tales confirm Crane’s place as the first modern American writer.

The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky

Stephen Crane, Frank Crocitto

Though best known for The Red Badge of Courage, his classic novel of men at war, in his tragically brief life and career Stephen Crane produced a wealth of stories—among them “The Monster,” “The Upturned Face,” “The Open Boat,” and the title story—that stand among the most acclaimed and enduring in the history of American fiction. This superb volume collects stories of unique power and variety in which impressionistic, hallucinatory, and realistic situations alike are brilliantly conveyed through the cold, sometimes brutal irony of Crane’s narrative voice.

The Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane

Henry Fleming has joined the Union army because of his romantic ideas of military life, but soon finds himself in the middle of a battle against a regiment of Confederate soldiers. Terrified, Henry deserts his comrades. Upon returning to his regiment, he struggles with his shame as he tries to redeem himself and prove his courage.

The Red Badge of Courage is Stephen Crane’s second book, notable for its realism and the fact that Crane had never personally experienced battle. Crane drew heavy inspiration from Century Magazine, a periodical known for its articles about the American Civil War. However, he criticized the articles for their lack of emotional depth and decided to write a war novel of his own. The manuscript was first serialized in December 1894 by The Philadelphia Press and quickly won Crane international acclaim before he died in June 1900 at the age of 28.

(Goodreads.com)

Likely we all read Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage in grade school. 
Reading the above, I find…

Each sentence is a gem…a clarity of thought, image and feeling as he conveys a heartfelt rendering of characters in extreme circumstances and Initiates the American writing of social realism.

Crane died at age 28 in 1900 of tuberculosis.  I believe had he lived longer likely he would be a Giant of American Literature.

Crane’s life and writing in the late 1800’s depicts stories of extreme circumstances which occurred in the society, culture and times that shaped the lives of our Great Grand Parents and thus the early lives of our Grandparents. 

–Hanz Bolen, H.W., M.