University of Virginia Library

STEPHEN CRANE.
AUTHOR OF "THE BLACK RIDERS, AND OTHER LINES"
Bookman 1 (May 1895): 229-230.

You will look in vain through the pages of the Trade Circular for any record of a story of New York life entitled Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, which was published three or four years ago in this city. At the moment of going to press the timorous publishers withdrew their imprint from the book, which was sold, in paper covers, for fifty cents. There seems to be considerable difficulty now in securing copies, but the fact that there is no publisher's name to the book, and that the author appears under the nom de plume of "Johnston Smith," may have something to do with its apparent disappearance. The copy which came into the writer's possession was addressed to the Rev. Thomas Dixon a few months ago, before the author went West on a journalistic trip to Nebraska, and has these words written across the cover: "It is inevitable that this book will greatly shock you, but continue, pray, with great courage to the end, for it tries to show that environment is a tremendous thing in this world, and often shapes lives regardlessly. If one could prove that theory, one would make room in Heaven for all sorts of souls (notably an occasional street girl) who are not confidently expected to be there by many excellent people." The author of this story and the writer of these words is Stephen Crane, whose "Lines" (he does not call them poems) have just been published by Copeland and Day, and are certain to make a sensation.

Stephen Crane is not yet twenty-four years old, but competent critics aver that his command of the English language is such as to raise the highest hopes for his future career. The impression he makes on his literary co-workers is that he is a young man of almost unlimited resource. The realism of his Maggie — a story that might have taken a greater hold on the public than even Chimmie Fadden, had the publishers been less timid—is of that daring and terrible directness which in its iconoclasm is the very characteristic of rugged undisciplined strength in a youth of genius. We hear the echo of this mood in number XLV. of his "Lines":

Mr. Crane started to write for the press when only sixteen, and he has been at newspaper work ever since. He has done very little outside of journalism; some of his stories have been contributed to the Cosmopolitan, and a story entitled The Red Badge of Courage, which relates the adventures of a recruit under fire for the first time during the Civil War, was one of the most successful serials which the Bachelor Syndicate have handled in a long time. This serial has now been set up in book

form, and will be published in the summer by Messrs. Appleton and Company, who think very highly of his work. Among other manuscripts which are now in the publishers' hands is one entitled A Woman Without Weapons. It is a story of New York life, like Maggie, but its scenes are laid on the borderland of the slums, and not down in the Devil's Row and Rum Alley. When Mr. Hamlin Garland read Maggie and reviewed it in the Arena on its appearance, he sought out the intrepid young author and introduced him to Mr. W. D. Howells, who in turn extended his kindness to young Crane, and made him acquainted with several of his confreres who were likely to encourage his literary aspirations. For over a year Mr. Crane has been on the staff of the Bachelor Syndicate, and he is now in Mexico "writing up" that country for them.

Mr. Crane is a New Yorker, and both his father and mother are dead. All the stanzas in the little volume which has just been published were written in a sudden fit of inspiration, in less than three days, and were polished and finished and sent off within a fortnight. The cover design of The Black Riders was drawn by Mr. F. C. Gordon, whose work on the beautiful holiday edition of Tennyson's Becket, published last Christmas, met with signal approbation. A review of The Black Riders appears in "Some Recent Volumes of Verse" on another page. What Hamlin Garland said of the author a few years ago may be now repeated with a more certain assurance of fulfilment: "With such a technique already in command, with life mainly before him, Stephen Crane is to be henceforth reckoned with."

The accompanying portrait of Mr. Crane is taken from a sketch in black and white by Mr. David Ericson, through whose courtesy we are able to reproduce it here.