Bibliographers and the scholars who rely on them have for the most
part slighted the West-to-East transatlantic migration of American literature.
In failing to discover the facts about the publication, distribution, and
reception of American literature in the English-reading world, these
researchers have not only cut themselves off from usable evidence about the
influence of American literature — they have also deprived
themselves of
crucial information about those American authors whose careers were
largely shaped by their success abroad.
Stephen Crane's British and Empire publications offer an eloquent
case in point. Crane exiled himself in England during his most productive
years, laboring to build not just a British following but, like Henry James
and other American writers, a career in another country. He achieved
prominence as a novelist with the publication of The Red Badge of
Courage in 1895; he died in 1900. From 1897 on —
two-thirds of
his major career — he was headquartered in England. Perhaps he
chose
to live in that country in part because he had a congenial publisher there:
William Heinemann distributed nine titles by him, more than did any
American publisher. But there have been four Stephen Crane
bibliographies,[1] three
biographies,[2] and four book-length
studies[3] — one of them a
study
of
Stephen Crane in England — and yet there is no adequate indication
of
the realities of Crane's literary position in England and the British
Empire.
The following is an inventory of unrecorded
information
about Stephen Crane's British books. It is not intended as definitive in this
area of Crane bibliography; only incidentally is it presented as a
contribution to that bibliography. It is intended primarily to fill in the
picture of the artifacts by which Crane was represented to his readers by his
publishers, simply as the source material for a discussion of some important
ways a working scholar can use the results of bibliographical investigation
to construct a sound and thorough consideration of an author's career
—
if by only raising questions about assumptions.
