Stephen Crane: Great Battles of the World (1901)•
Stephen Crane (1897)Stephen Crane: Great Battles of the World (1901)
[St. John Opportunity Shop, Wairau Park - 24/1/2023]:
Stephen Crane. Great Battles of the World. Note by Harrison S. Morris. Illustrated by John Sloan. Bell's Indian and Colonial Library. London & Bombay: George Bell & Sons, 1901.
I was rather surprised to see a rather battered copy of this book sitting in a local vintage shop. I'd never actually heard of it, but I knew that Stephen Crane had to scribble away desperately for cash in his last days, and this - presumably - was one of the results.
So it proved. When I checked in my Library of America edition of his collected Prose and Poetry, the chronology listed, under 1899:
begins a popular series, Great Battles of the World (published 1901), relying on Kate Lyon for research and eventually for much of the writing ... [p.1358]He had less than a year to live at the time: he was carried off by tuberculosis on June 5, 1900.
Kate Lyon - no relation to Isabel Lyon, the bugaboo of Mark Twain's old age - was the common-law partner of American writer Harold Frederic (1856-1898), with whom she had three children, two of whom were taken in by Stephen and Cora Crane after their father's death. Kate was a Christian Scientist, which meant that she didn't believe in conventional medicine (she was subsequently unsuccessfully sued by Frederic's first wife, who alleged that she and her healer were responsible for his illness and death).
Henry James was one of many writers who frequented the Cranes' rather louche ménage in Sussex. They lived far beyond their income, and supported a number of bludging friends and associates. James, while deploring all this, supported them as best as he could both before and after Crane's death. It must have reminded him of Robert Louis Stevenson's fate half a decade before: writing grimly to the last.
So, while this is not one of the works that Crane's reputation relies on - Maggie; The Red Badge of Courage; "The Open Boat" - it retains a certain interest. The copy I found was neither the English nor the American first edition; it's one published simultaneously by Bell's Indian and Colonial Library (Bombay & London). I doubt that it's tremendously valuable, given its poor condition, but it's definitely a find: and very readable to boot.
Creasy, Sir Edward S. The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo. 1851. Everyman’s Library. 1908. London: J. M. Dent / New York: E. P. Dutton, 1919.
Not that the subject is a particularly novel one. The classic work on the subject is still Sir Edward Creasy's, much reprinted since its first appearance in 1851.
J. F. C. Fuller. Decisive Battles of the Western World and Their Influence on History. 1939-40. Rev. ed. in 3 vols. 1954-56. London: Cassel & Co., 2001.
- From the Earliest Times to the Battle of Lepanto (1954)
- From the Defeat of the Spanish Armada to Waterloo (1955)
- From the American Civil War to the End of the Second World War (1956)
J. F. C. Fuller's is a rather more comprehensive survey, but its author's obvious Fascist sympathies, which led him to devote an inordinate amount of space to praising Mussolini and other dictators in the latter parts of his opus, make it rather difficult to stomach nowadays.
The illustrations in Crane's book are also rather quaint: particularly this one of the disorder - presided over by various angels of mercy - after the Battle of Vittoria. Not to mention the one below of the heroic American defence of Bunker Hill:
I've long held a bit of a torch for these uncompromising American realists: Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris - even, a bit later, James T. Farrell and Upton Sinclair. Stephen Crane was a lot more than that: an influential poet, in particular, but his realistic depiction of war probably remains the most important part of his appeal even after all these years.
Books I own are marked in bold:
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Works:
- The Works of Stephen Crane. Ed. Fredson Bowers. 10 vols. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1969-1976.
- Prose and Poetry. Ed. J. C. Levenson. The Library of America, 18 (1984)
- Prose and Poetry: Maggie: a Girl of the Streets; The Red Badge of Courage; Stories, Sketches, and Journalism; Poetry. Ed. J. C. Levenson. The Library of America, 18. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.
- Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)
- Included in: Prose and Poetry. Ed. J. C. Levenson. The Library of America, 18. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.
- The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
- The Red Badge of Courage. Ed. John T. Winterich. With Civil War Photographs. London: The Folio Society, 1951.
- The Red Badge of Courage and Other Stories. 1893-1900. Introduction by V. S Pritchett. Ed. R. W. Stallman. 1960. Oxford Paperbacks. London: Oxford University Press, 1969.
- Included in: Prose and Poetry. Ed. J. C. Levenson. The Library of America, 18. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.
- George's Mother (1896)
- Included in: Prose and Poetry. Ed. J. C. Levenson. The Library of America, 18. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.
- The Third Violet (1897)
- Included in: Prose and Poetry. Ed. J. C. Levenson. The Library of America, 18. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.
- Active Service (1899)
- [with Robert Barr]. The O'Ruddy (1903)
- The Little Regiment and Other Episodes from the American Civil War (1896)
- Included in: Prose and Poetry. Ed. J. C. Levenson. The Library of America, 18. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.
- The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure (1898)
- Included in: Prose and Poetry. Ed. J. C. Levenson. The Library of America, 18. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.
- The Monster and Other Stories (1899)
- The Monster
- The Blue Hotel
- His New Mittens
- Included in: Prose and Poetry. Ed. J. C. Levenson. The Library of America, 18. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.
- Whilomville Stories (1900)
- Included in: Prose and Poetry. Ed. J. C. Levenson. The Library of America, 18. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.
- Wounds in the Rain: War Stories (1900)
- The Monster (1901)
- The Monster
- The Blue Hotel
- His New Mittens
- Twelve O'Clock
- Moonlight on the Snow
- Manacled
- An Illusion in Red and White
- Last Words (1902)
- Included in: Prose and Poetry. Ed. J. C. Levenson. The Library of America, 18. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.
- Great Battles of the World (1901)
- Great Battles of the World. Note by Harrison S. Morris. Illustrated by John Sloan. Bell's Indian and Colonial Library. London & Bombay: George Bell & Sons, 1901.
- The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895)
- Included in: Prose and Poetry. Ed. J. C. Levenson. The Library of America, 18. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.
- War is Kind and Other Lines (1899)
- Included in: Prose and Poetry. Ed. J. C. Levenson. The Library of America, 18. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.
- Berryman, John. Stephen Crane: A Critical Biography (1950)
- Williams, Ames William. Stephen Crane: A Bibliography (1970)
- Stallman, R. W. Stephen Crane: A Critical Bibliography (1972)
- Wertheim, Stanley. A Stephen Crane Encyclopedia (1997)
Novels:
Short stories:
Non-fiction:
Poetry:
Secondary:
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- category - American Fiction: Authors
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