Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Maggie: A Girl of the Streets | 1893 |
| The Red Badge of Courage | 1895 |
| George’s Mother | 1896 |
| The Third Violet | 1897 |
| Active Service | 1899 |
| The O’Ruddy (With: Robert Barr) | 1903 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| The Little Regiment and Other Episodes from the American Civil War | 1896 |
| The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure | 1898 |
| The Monster and Other Stories | 1899 |
| Whilomville Stories | 1900 |
| Wounds in the Rain | 1900 |
| Last Words | 1902 |
Publication Order of Poetry Collections
| The Black Riders and Other Lines | 1895 |
| War Is Kind | 1899 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| Great Battles of the World | 1901 |
About Stephen Crane
Stephen Crane (1871 to 1900) was an American novelist, short story writer and poet, best known for the Civil War novel “The Red Badge of Courage” (1895). He died of tuberculosis at the age of 28 after a short career that produced five novels, two volumes of poetry and several story collections.
Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey, the fourteenth and last child of a Methodist minister, who died when Stephen was eight. He was schooled at Pennington Seminary and Claverack College, then spent short periods at Lafayette College and Syracuse University before leaving in 1891 to work as a reporter and writer.
His first novel, “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets” (1893), follows a young woman from New York’s Bowery who descends into prostitution. Publishers initially rejected it, and critics now generally regard it as the first work of American literary Naturalism. “The Red Badge of Courage” was serialised in newspapers before its book publication in October 1895. It tells of Henry Fleming, a young private in the Union Army who runs from the battlefield, and Crane wrote it before he had any experience of war. The novel won him international acclaim.
Late in 1896 Crane agreed to go to Cuba as a war correspondent. While waiting in Jacksonville, Florida, he met Cora Taylor, who became his companion for the rest of his life. His ship, the SS Commodore, sank off the Florida coast and left him adrift in a dinghy for 30 hours, an ordeal he turned into the story “The Open Boat”. He went on to cover the war in Greece, then settled in England, where Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells became friends. The novels “The Third Violet” and “Active Service” date from these years, as do the stories “The Blue Hotel”, “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” and “The Monster”. His two books of poems, “The Black Riders and Other Lines” and “War Is Kind”, are written in free verse without rhyme or titles.
Crane died on 5 June 1900 at a sanatorium in Badenweiler, Germany. “Whilomville Stories” and “Wounds in the Rain” came out later that year, and his last novel, “The O’Ruddy”, was finished by Robert Barr and published in 1903. His work was nearly forgotten by the early 1920s, until Thomas Beer’s biography of 1923 revived interest in it. John Huston filmed “The Red Badge of Courage” in 1951, and Ernest Hemingway called the novel one of the finest books of American literature.