Читать книгу Essential Novelists - Stephen Crane - Stephen Crane, August Nemo, John Dos Passos - Страница 3

Author

BORN ON NOVEMBER 1, 1871, in Newark, New Jersey, Stephen Crane was the 14th and last child of writer/suffragist Mary Helen Peck Crane and Reverend Jonathan Townley Crane, a Methodist Episcopal minister. Raised by his older sister Agnes, the young Crane attended preparatory school at Claverack College.

Crane truly embarked upon a literary career in the early 1890s when he moved to New York and began freelancing as a writer, coming to work for the New York Tribune. Living a bohemian lifestyle among local artists, Crane gained firsthand familiarity with poverty and street life, focusing his writing efforts on New York's downtrodden tenement districts, particularly the Bowery. A once-thriving area in the southern part of Manhattan, the post-Civil War era saw the Bowery's busy shops and hulking mansions replaced by saloons, dance halls and brothels. Crane immersed himself into this world.

In 1895, Crane published what would become his most famous novel, The Red Badge of Courage. A work that followed an individual soldier's emotional experiences in the midst of a Civil War battle, Courage became renowned for its perceived authenticity and realistic depictions of violent conflict. Crane had in fact never been in military combat, constructing scenes from research and what he referred to as skirmishes on the football field.

Due to Crane's new reputation as a war writer, as well as his curiosity about his accuracy in depicting psychological states of combat, he undertook a new career: war correspondent. In 1897, Crane set sail for Cuba to report on the insurrection there. However, after the ship on which he was traveling, the SS Commodore, sank, Crane spent more than a day adrift with three other men. His account of the ordeal resulted in one of the world's great short stories, "The Open Boat."

In May 1900, Crane checked into a health spa on the edge of the Black Forest in Germany. One month later, on June 5, 1900, Stephen Crane died of tuberculosis at the age of 28.