Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey. After attending Syracuse University for one semester, he started working as a freelance reporter in the slums of New York City. He published
his first work, Maggie, a Girl of the Streets(1893), drawing on this experience.
Crane is best known for The Red Badge of Courage(1895), a realistic look at the Civil War.
Crane served as a correspondent during the Spanish-American War in 1898. At that time, he published The Open Boat and Other Stories(1898). In 1897, he moved to England
and associated himself with such writers as Joseph Conrad and Henry James.
Crane practiced a type of writing style known as naturalism, known for it's realistic and bleak outlook on the power of humanity to overcome natural forces.
Stephen Crane died of tuberculosis, which he caught accompanying an expedition from the United States to Cuba.
