Stephen Crane wrote about war with all the compassion and poetry of a great artist. He was the first American writer to depict the horrors of war, the ambiguities of courage, and the absence of heroic illusions among soldiers. In addition, The Red Badge of Courage is a brilliantly structured work that illuminates the nature of the artistic imagination: Stephen Crane did not experience the war first hand, but through the powers of empathy and projection he has given us an unparalleled and unforgettable picture of the Civil War stripped of romantic glorification.

Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1871, the son of a Methodist minister. Both of his parents and two of his brothers were writers. A first draft of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets was written by Crane while he was attending Syracuse University and was published in 1893 at his own expense. The Red Badge of Courage was written when he was twenty-one. A third novel, George's Mother, was published in 1896; a collection of short stories also appeared in that year. A fourth novel, The Third Violet, appeared a year later. Crane was acclaimed during his own life. In addition to his novels he was a prolific short-story writer and poet. He also earned a living as a reporter, and covered the Greco-Turkish and the Spanish-American wars for major newspapers. Crane and a friend Cora Taylor settled briefly in England. He died in Badenweiler, Germany, in 1900, after suffering from tuberculosis.