With the exception of Poe, no American writer has proven as challenging to biographers as the author of The Red Badge of Courage. Stephen Crane’s short, compact life—“a life of fire,” he called it—continues to be surrounded by myths and half-truths, distortions and outright fabrications. Mindful of the pitfalls that have marred previous biographies, Paul Sorrentino has sifted through garbled chronologies and contradictory eyewitness accounts, scoured the archives, and followed in Crane’s footsteps. The result is the most complete and accurate account of the poet and novelist written to date.
Whether Crane was dressing as a hobo to document the life of the homeless in the Bowery, defending a prostitute against corrupt New York City law enforcement, or covering the historic charge up the San Juan hills as a correspondent during the Spanish-American War, his adventures were front-page news. From Sorrentino’s layered narrative of the various phases of Crane’s life a portrait slowly emerges. By turns taciturn and garrulous, confident and insecure, romantic and cynical, Crane was a man of irresolvable contradictions. He rebelled against tradition yet was proud of his family heritage; he lived a Bohemian existence yet was drawn to social status; he romanticized women yet obsessively sought out prostitutes; he spurned a God he saw as remote yet wished for His presence.
Incorporating decades of research by the foremost authority on Crane’s work, Stephen Crane: A Life of Fire sets a new benchmark for biographers.
Paul Sorrentino is the Clifford A. Cutchins III Professor of English at Virginia Tech.
Table of Contents
Contents Introduction Prologue: Final Days, January–June 1900 Part I. The Wrenches of Childhood 1. Roots and Beginnings: 1635–1871 2. Childhood: 1871–1884 3. The Holiness Controversy: 1874–1879 4. Onward to Port Jervis: March 1878–February 1880 5. Schooling at Asbury Park, Pennington, Claverack: March 1880–Spring 1890 6. College at Lafayette and Syracuse: September 1890–May 1891 Part II. Learning the Craft 7. Fledgling Writer: 1887–December 1891 8. Satirist in Asbury Park: Summer 1892 9. Maggie: September 1892–March 1893 10. Genesis of The Red Badge of Courage: 1893–February 1894 11. Struggling Artist, Poet at Work: February–March 1894 12. Frustrated Artist: April–December 1894 13. On the Verge of Celebrity: January–October 1895 Part III. Fame, Notoriety, an Altered Point of View 14. International Fame: Fall 1895–Spring 1896 15. Price of Fame: January–September 1896 16. The Dora Clark Incident: Fall 1896 17. Jacksonville: November–December 1896 18. The Commodore Incident: January 1897 19. The Greco-Turkish War: January–May 1897 Part IV. New Start. Old Habits 20. Ravensbrook, Harold Frederic, Joseph Conrad: June–October 1897 21. Creative Outburst: October 1897–April 1898 22. Prelude to War: January–May 1898 23. War in Cuba: June–July 1898 24. New York City, Adirondacks, Puerto Rico: July–August 1898 25. Havana: September–December 1898 Part V. Search for Respectability, Country Squire 26. Brede Place, Return to Childhood, Another Potboiler:January–June 1899 27. Brede Place Visitors, Return to Ancestry: June–August 1899 28. Trips to Europe, Final Celebration, Badenweiler: September 1899–June 1900 Abbreviations Notes Acknowledgments Index
