World famous at twenty-four, brilliant and reckless, hard-living and scandalous, Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage before he ever experienced war first-hand.

So true was his portrait of a young man who runs from his first confrontation with battle that Civil War veterans argued about whose regiment Crane had been in. Considered by H.G. Wells as "beyond dispute, the best writer of our generation," Crane was also famous in his time as an unforgettable personality, an Adonis with tawny hair and gray-blue eyes that Willa Cather described as "full of luster and changing lights." A lover of women and truth at any cost, Crane, in his short life, paid dearly for both. He alienated the New York police when he testified against a policeman on behalf of a prostitute falsely accused of soliciting, forcing him to live the rest of his short life as an expatriate in England. Reporting on the Spanish American War, Crane described the Rough Riders blundering into a trap after arriving in Cuba, infuriating Roosevelt. He died tragically young, leaving behind a handful of fine short stories, including The Open Boat and The Blue Hotel, along with war reporting, novels, and poetry.

About the Author
Linda H. Davis is the author of three biographies: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life (Random House, 2006), Badge of Courage: The Life of Stephen Crane (Houghton Mifflin, 1998), and Onward and Upward: A Biography of Katharine S. White (Harper & Row, 1987). Her e-book, Autism on the Farm: A Story of Triumph, Possibility, and a Place Called Bittersweet, was published by The Miniver Press. She was born in Portland, Oregon in 1953, but has lived in Massachusetts most of her life. Married to Chuck Yanikoski, she is the mother of two, the mother-in-law of one, and the grandmother of three. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN.com, Granta, The New Yorker, and other publications. A paperback edition of Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life will be published by Turner Publishing in October, 2021.


Book Information
ISBN 9781684427314
Author Linda H. Davis
Format Hardback
Imprint Turner Publishing Company
Publisher Turner Publishing Company