stephen Crane
... goes to show that school is not for everyone. “He was at the Hudson River Institute, Claverack, N.Y., 1887-89, at Lafayette a year, and the next year at Syracuse University, where he had work as correspondent of the New York Tribune. The record of this period has more of loafing, news-writing, and baseball--he was team captain at Syracuse--than of studies”. (Dictionary of American biography Base Set) After leaving school, he went to live in New York, doing ‘”freelance” ( Stallman) writing and working Rojas 2 on his first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. “His times in New York were split between his apartment in the Bowery slum in Manhattan and well off family in the nearby town of Port Jervis.”( Dictionary of American biography Base Set) Crane’s novel did not receive much credit because at that time his novel was considered a scandal- “when printed late in 1892 with $700 borrowed from a brother, it was piled in his room unsold”, but William Dean Howells saw the potential Crane possessed and helped him receive backing for his next project, The Red Badge of Courage. The year of 1895, Crane’s life made a 180 degree change with The Red Badge of Courage published. It brought Crane international fame and quite a bit of money, “it became a best seller and won a large following in England.” ( Edwards). Many veterans of the civil war (only thirty years had gone by since its end) praised the book for capturing the feelings and pictures of actual combat. Encouraged by the success of The Red Badge of Courage and his other triumph, The Black Riders, Crane became crazy with more idea of war. He was hired to go to Cuba as a journalist to report on the rebellion there against the Spanish. On the way to the island, Crane experienced a tragedy- a shipwreck, which he was originally reported dead. Fortunately the doors of literature did not close up for Crane. He rowed to shore in a “dinghy” ( Stallman) along with 3 other men. “1898--Crane reported during the Spanish-American War for the New York World and the New York Journal. Richard Harding Davis said Crane was the best war correspondent in Cuba. Crane published several other works: The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure, "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," "Death and the Child," "The Monster," and "The Blue Hotel."(Edwards) After this traumatic event, Crane “for various reasons” ( Stallman) stopped writin...