The Red Badge of Courage: an episode of the American Civil War, and other stories

The Red Badge of Courage (1895) is a vivid psychological account of a young man's experience of fighting in the American Civil War, based on Crane's reading of popular descriptions of battle. The intensity of its narrative and its naturalistic power earned Crane instant success, and led to his spending most of his brief remaining life war reporting. The other stories collected in this volume draw on this experience; `The Open Boat'(1898) was inspired by his fifty hour struggle with waves after his ship was sunk during an expedition to Cuba; `The Monster'(1899) is a bitterly ironic commentary on the ostracization of a doctor for harbouring the servant who was disfigured and lost his sanity rescuing his son. As a rare example of Crane working in a vein of American Gothic, it is particularly striking for its treatment of race and social injustice. `The Blue Hotel'traces the events that lead to a murder at a bar in a small Nebraska town. This edition is the most generously annotated edition of Crane's work, exploring it from a fresh critical perspective and focusing on his place as an experimental writer, his modernist legacy and his social as well as literary revisionism. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. First published in 1895, this small masterpiece set the pattern for the treatment of war in modern fiction. The novel is told through the eyes of Henry Fleming, a young soldier caught up in an unnamed Civil War battle who is motivated not by the unselfish heroism of conventional war stories, but by fear, cowardice, and finally, egotism. However, in his struggle to find reality amid the nightmarish chaos of war, the young soldier also discovers courage, humility, and perhaps, wisdom. Although Crane had never been in battle before writing The Red Badge of Courage , the book was widely praised by experienced soldiers for its uncanny re-creation of the sights, sounds, and sense of actual combat. Its publication brought Crane immediate international fame and established him as a major American writer. Today, nearly a century later, the book ranks as an enduring landmark of American fiction.

Oxford offers the most generously annotated edition of The Red Badge of Courage (1895), a vivid psychological account of a young man's experience fighting in the American Civil War based on Crane's reading of popular descriptions of battle. This volume also includes the short stories "The Open Boat"(1898), "The Monster"(1899), and "The Blue Hotel". The editors explore Crane's work from a fresh critical perspective, focusing on his role as an experimental writer, his modernist legacy, and his social as well as literary revisionism.

During his service in the Civil War a young Union soldier matures to manhood and finds peace of mind as he comes to grips with his conflicting emotions about war.

A vivid psychological account of a young man's experience of fighting in the American Civil War, based on Crane's reading of popular descriptions of battle. The text also contains a number of Crane's other stories including "The Open Boat" and "The Blue Hotel". This powerful, emotionally compelling novel set the pattern for the treatment of war in modern fiction. The Civil War tale established Crane as a major author and remains a landmark of American literature Contains an introduction to the life of author Stephen Crane along with five of his best known works