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Stephen Crane: Prose & Poetry

Edited by J. C. Levenson

“Stephen Crane’s existence brings into play a great many possibilities of interpretation, some of them having a powerful human appeal, some serio-comic, some tragic, almost all touched with the inexplicable…[H]e was at home at all levels of humanity.” — The Washington Post

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents

Overview

Story of the Week “The Lover and the Tell-Tale,” Stephen Crane
November 1, 2024

Story of the Week “Stephen Crane’s Own Story,” Stephen Crane
November 1, 2023

Story of the Week Stephen Crane, “Stories Told by an Artist”
November 10, 2022

This Library of America volume shows why Stephen Crane has come to be recognized as one of the most innovative and diversely talented writers of his generation, even though he died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-eight. This comprehensive collection includes all his most accomplished and best-known works: five novels, short stories, journalism, war correspondence, and his two completed books of poetry.

Here are the classic novels he published in a span of five years: The Red Badge of Courage (1895), about a young and confused Union soldier under fire for the first time; Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), a vivid portrait of slum life and a young girl’s fall; George’s Mother (1896), about New York’s Bowery and its effect on a young workingman fresh from the country; The Third Violet (1897), the story of a bohemian artist’s country romance; and The Monster (1899), a novella about sacrifice and rescue, guilt and isolation.

Among his short stories are such masterpieces as “The Open Boat,” “The Blue Hotel,” and “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky.” His prose is at the same time dense and lean, suited to his description of the elusive forces that impinge upon his characters, and suited also to his desire not to circumscribe them with traditional moral and interpretive definition. Included here as well are the Whilomville stories of children and childhood in small-town America and the Sullivan County sketches of turn-of-the-twentieth-century rural life.

As a journalist, Crane covered the Spanish-American War and the Greco-Turkish War, traveled through Mexico and the West, and reported on the seamier sides of New York City life; the best of his dispatches are gathered here. Also featured are both of Crane’s collections of epigrammatic free verse—The Black Riders (1895) and War is Kind (1899)—and selections from his uncollected poems. His poetry shows strong affinities to Emily Dickinson, while also anticipating the Imagist movement later in the twentieth century.

This is the most substantial gathering of Crane’s work ever made available in one volume; it is an enduring testimony to his heroic achievement.

J. C. Levenson, volume editor, was Edgar Allan Poe Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia and is the author of Mind and Art of Henry Adams and co-editor of Concise Anthology of American Literature.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Stephen Crane: Prose & Poetry is kept in print by a gift from the Edward John Noble Foundation to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.
News & Views

Story of the Week “The Lover and the Tell-Tale,” Stephen Crane
November 1, 2024

Story of the Week “Stephen Crane’s Own Story,” Stephen Crane
November 1, 2023

Story of the Week Stephen Crane, “Stories Told by an Artist”
November 10, 2022

Video Burning Boy: Paul Auster on the Extraordinary Life and Work of Stephen Crane
May 4, 2022

Story of the Week Stephen Crane, “An Episode of War”
November 1, 2021
Table of Contents

Novels and Novellas
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)
The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
George’s Mother (1896)
The Third Violet (1896-97)
The Monster (1898)

Stories, Sketches, and Journalism
The selections are arranged in the volume chronologically by place.
They are listed below in alphabetical order.

Adventures of a Novelist
“And If He Wills, We Must Die”
The Angel-Child
The Art Students’ League Building
Avon’s School by the Sea
Ballydehob
The Black Dog
The Blue Hotel
The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky
The Broken-Down Van
The Carriage-Lamps
The City Urchin and the Chaste Villagers
The Clan of No-Name
Concerning the English “Academy”
Coney Island’s Failing Days
Crane at Velestino
A Dark-Brown Dog
Death and the Child
An Eloquence of Grief
An Episode of War
An Excursion Ticket
An Experiment in Luxury
An Experiment in Misery
The Fight
The Fire
A Fishing Village
The Five White Mice
Flanagan and His Short Filibustering Adventure
Four Men in a Cave
Galveston, Texas, in 1895
A Ghoul’s Accountant
“God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen”
A Great Mistake
Greek War Correspondents
A Grey Sleeve
Harold Frederic
His New Mittens
Howells Discussed at Avon-by-the-Sea
Howells Fears the Realists Must Wait
Hunting Wild Hogs
In a Park Row Restaurant
In the Depths of a Coal Mine
The Kicking Twelfth
Killing His Bear
The Knife
The Last of the Mohicans
The Little Regiment
London Impressions
The Lover and the Tell-Tale
Lynx-Hunting
A Man and Some Others
Manacled
Marines Signaling Under Fire at Guantanamo
The Men in the Storm
The Mesmeric Mountain
The Mexican Lower Classes.
Mr. Binks’ Day Off
Moonlight on the Snow .
A Mystery of Heroism: A Detail of an American Battle
Nebraska’s Bitter Fight for Life
New York’s Bicycle Speedway
The Octopush
An Ominous Baby
On the Boardwalk
One Dash—Horses
The Open Boat
Opium’s Varied Dreams
The Pace of Youth
Parades and Entertainments
A Poker Game
The Price of the Harness
Regulars Get No Glory
The Revenge of the Adolphus
The Royal Irish Constabulary
The Second Generation
Seen at Hot Springs
Shame
“Showin’ Off”
The Shrapnel of Their Friends
Stephen Crane at the Front for the World
Stephen Crane in Mexico (II)
Stephen Crane in Texas
Stephen Crane Tells of War’s Horrors
Stephen Crane’s Own Story
Stephen Crane’s Vivid Story of the Battle of San Juan
Stories Told by an Artist
A Tent in Agony
This Majestic Lie
The Trial, Execution, and Burial of Homer Phelps
Twelve O’Clock
The Upturned Face
The Veteran
Virtue in War
When Man Falls, a Crowd Gathers
The Wise Men: A Detail of American Life in Mexico

Poems
The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895)
War Is Kind (1899)
Uncollected Poems

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ISBN: 978-0-94045017-2 1379 pages

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N° 18 Library of America Series

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