Early years Stephen Crane was born on November 1, 1871, in
Newark, New Jersey, to
Jonathan Townley Crane, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal church, and
Mary Helen Peck Crane, daughter of a clergyman,
George Peck. He was the fourteenth and last child born to the couple. At 45, Helen Crane had suffered the deaths of her previous four children in infancy. Nicknamed "Stevie" by the family, he joined eight surviving brothers and sisters—Mary Helen, George Peck, Jonathan Townley,
William Howe, Agnes Elizabeth, Edmund Byran, Wilbur Fiske, and Luther. The Cranes were descended from Jaspar Crane, a founder of
New Haven Colony, who had migrated there from England in 1639. Stephen was named for a putative founder of
Elizabethtown, New Jersey, who had, according to family tradition, come from England or Wales in 1665, as well as his great-great-grandfather
Stephen Crane, a
Revolutionary War patriot who served as New Jersey delegate to the
First Continental Congress in
Philadelphia. Crane later wrote that his father "was a great, fine, simple mind", who had written numerous tracts on theology. Although his mother was a popular spokeswoman for the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union and a highly religious woman, Crane wrote that he did not believe "she was as narrow as most of her friends or family." The young Stephen was raised primarily by his sister Agnes, 15 years his senior. The family moved to
Port Jervis, New York, in 1876, where Dr. Crane became the pastor of Drew Methodist Church, a position that he retained until his death. As a child, Crane was often sickly and afflicted by constant
colds. When the boy was almost two, his father wrote in his diary that his youngest son became "so sick that we are anxious about him." Despite his fragile nature, Crane was an intelligent child who taught himself to read before the age of four. At the age of three, while imitating his brother Townley's writing, he asked his mother, "how do you spell
O?" In December 1879, Crane wrote a poem about wanting a dog for Christmas. Entitled "I'd Rather Have –", it is his first surviving poem. Stephen was not regularly enrolled in school until January 1880, but he had no difficulty in completing two grades in six weeks. Recalling this feat, he wrote that it "sounds like the lie of a fond mother at a teaparty, but I do remember that I got ahead very fast and that father was very pleased with me." Dr. Crane died on February 16, 1880, at the age of 60; Stephen was eight years old. Some 1,400 people attended his funeral, more than double the size of his congregation. After her husband's death, Mrs. Crane moved to
Roseville, near Newark, leaving Stephen in the care of his older brother Edmund, with whom the young boy lived with cousins in
Sussex County. He next lived with his brother William, a lawyer, in Port Jervis for several years. His older sister Helen took him to
Asbury Park to be with their brother Townley and his wife, Fannie. Townley was a professional journalist; he headed the
Long Branch department of both the
New-York Tribune and the
Associated Press, and also served as editor of the
Asbury Park Shore Press. Agnes, another Crane sister, joined the siblings in
New Jersey. She took a position at Asbury Park's intermediate school and moved in with Helen to care for the young Stephen. Within a couple of years, the Crane family suffered more losses. First, Townley and his wife lost their two young children. His wife Fannie died of
Bright's disease in November 1883. Agnes Crane became ill and died on June 10, 1884, of
meningitis at the age of 28.
Schooling Crane wrote his first known story, "Uncle Jake and the Bell Handle", when he was 14. In late 1885, he enrolled at
Pennington Seminary, a ministry-focused coeducational boarding school north of
Trenton. His father had been principal there from 1849 to 1858. Soon after her youngest son left for school, Mrs. Crane began suffering what the
Asbury Park Shore Press reported as "a temporary aberration of the mind." She had apparently recovered by early 1886, but later that year, her son, 23-year-old Luther Crane, died after falling in front of an oncoming train while working as a railroad flagman. It was the fourth death in six years among Stephen's immediate family. After two years, Crane left Pennington for
Claverack College, a quasi-military school. He later looked back on his time at Claverack as "the happiest period of my life although I was not aware of it." A classmate remembered him as a highly literate but erratic student, lucky to pass examinations in math and science, and yet "far in advance of his fellow students in his knowledge of History and Literature", his favorite subjects. While he held an impressive record on the drill field and baseball diamond, Crane generally did not excel in the classroom. Not having a middle name, as was customary among other students, he took to signing his name "Stephen T. Crane" in order "to win recognition as a regular fellow". Crane was seen as friendly, but also moody and rebellious. He sometimes skipped class to play baseball, a game in which he starred as
catcher. He was also greatly interested in the school's military training. He rose rapidly in the ranks of the student battalion. One classmate described him as "indeed physically attractive without being handsome", but he was aloof, reserved and not generally popular. Although academically weak, Crane gained experience at Claverack that provided background (and likely some anecdotes from the Civil War veterans on the staff) for
The Red Badge of Courage. , 1891. (Photo courtesy of the SU Special Collections Research Center) In mid-1888, Crane became his brother Townley's assistant at a New Jersey shore news bureau, working there every summer until 1892. Crane's first publication under his byline was an article on the explorer
Henry M. Stanley's quest to find the Scottish missionary
David Livingstone in Africa. It appeared in the February 1890 Claverack College
Vidette. Within a few months, Crane was persuaded by his family to forgo a military career and transfer to
Lafayette College in
Easton, Pennsylvania, to pursue a mining engineering degree. He registered at Lafayette on September 12; he promptly took up baseball again and joined the largest fraternity,
Delta Upsilon. He also joined both rival literary societies, named for (George) Washington and (Benjamin) Franklin. Crane infrequently attended classes and ended the semester with grades for four of his seven courses. After one semester, Crane transferred to
Syracuse University, where he enrolled as a non-degree candidate in the College of Liberal Arts. He roomed in the Delta Upsilon fraternity house and joined the baseball team. Attending just one class (English Literature) during the middle trimester, he remained in residence while taking no courses in the third. Concentrating on his writing, Crane began to experiment with tone and style while trying out different subjects. He published his fictional story, "Great Bugs of Onondaga," simultaneously in the
Syracuse Daily Standard and the
New York Tribune. Declaring college "a waste of time", Crane decided to become a full-time writer and reporter. He attended a Delta Upsilon chapter meeting on June 12, 1891, but shortly afterward left college for good.
Full-time writer In the summer of 1891, Crane often camped with friends in the nearby area of
Sullivan County, New York, where his brother Edmund occupied a house obtained as part of their brother William's Hartwood Club (Association) land dealings. He used this area as the geographic setting for several short stories, which were posthumously published in a collection under the title
Stephen Crane: Sullivan County Tales and Sketches. Crane showed two of these works to
New York Tribune editor
Willis Fletcher Johnson, a family friend, who accepted them for publication. "Hunting Wild Dogs" and "The Last of the Mohicans" were the first of fourteen unsigned Sullivan County sketches and tales published in the
Tribune between February and July 1892. Crane also showed Johnson an early draft of his first novel,
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. Later that summer, Crane met and befriended author
Hamlin Garland, who had been lecturing locally on American literature and arts. On August 17, Garland gave a talk on novelist
William Dean Howells, which Crane wrote up for the
Tribune. Garland became a mentor for and champion of the young writer, whose intellectual honesty impressed him. Their relationship suffered in later years, however, because Garland disapproved of Crane's alleged immorality, related to his living with a woman married to another man. Stephen moved into his brother Edmund's house in
Lakeview, a suburb of
Paterson, New Jersey, in the fall of 1891. From there he made frequent trips into
New York City, writing and reporting, particularly on its impoverished tenement districts. Crane focused particularly on The
Bowery, a small and once prosperous neighborhood in southern
Manhattan. After the Civil War, Bowery shops and mansions had given way to saloons, dance halls, brothels and
flophouses, all of which Crane frequented. He later said he did so for research. He was attracted to the human nature found in the slums, considering it "open and plain, with nothing hidden." Believing nothing honest and unsentimental had been written about the Bowery, Crane became determined to do so himself; this was the setting of his first novel. On December 7, 1891, Crane's mother died at the age of 64, and the 20-year-old appointed Edmund as his guardian. In the spring of 1892, Crane began a romance with Lily Brandon Munroe, a married woman who was estranged from her husband. He did so despite being frail, undernourished, and suffering from a hacking cough – none of which prevented him from smoking cigarettes. Although Munroe later said Crane "was not a handsome man," she admired his "remarkable almond-shaped gray eyes." He begged her to elope with him, but her family opposed the match because Crane lacked money and prospects, and she declined. Their last meeting likely occurred in April 1898. Between July 2 and September 11, 1892, Crane published more than ten news reports on Asbury Park affairs. Although a
Tribune colleague stated that Crane "was not highly distinguished above any other boy of twenty who had gained a reputation for saying and writing bright things," that summer his reporting took on a more skeptical, hypocrisy-deflating tone. A storm of controversy erupted over a report he wrote on the
Junior Order of United American Mechanics' American Day Parade, titled "Parades and Entertainments." Published on August 21, the report juxtaposes the "bronzed, slope-shouldered, uncouth" marching men "begrimed with dust" and the spectators dressed in "summer gowns, lace parasols, tennis trousers, straw hats and indifferent smiles." Believing they were being ridiculed, some JOUAM marchers were outraged and wrote to the editor. The owner of the
Tribune,
Whitelaw Reid, was that year's Republican vice-presidential candidate, and this likely increased the sensitivity of the paper's management to the issue. Although Townley wrote a piece for the
Asbury Park Daily Press in his brother's defense, the
Tribune quickly apologized to its readers, calling Stephen Crane's piece "a bit of random correspondence, passed inadvertently by the copy editor." Hamlin Garland and biographer John Barry attested that Crane told them he had been dismissed by the
Tribune. Although Willis Fletcher Johnson later denied this, the paper did not publish any of Crane's work after 1892.
Life in New York Crane struggled to make a living as a freelance writer, contributing sketches and feature articles to various New York newspapers. In October 1892, he moved into a rooming house in Manhattan whose boarders were a group of medical students. During this time, he expanded or entirely reworked
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. In the winter of 1893, Crane took the manuscript of
Maggie to
Richard Watson Gilder, who rejected it for publication in
The Century Magazine. Crane decided to publish it privately, with money he had inherited from his mother. The novella was published in late February or early March 1893 by a small printing shop that usually printed medical books and religious tracts. The typewritten title page for the
Library of Congress copyright application read simply: "A Girl of the Streets, / A Story of New York. / —By—/Stephen Crane." The name "Maggie" was added to the title later. Crane used the pseudonym "Johnston Smith" for the novella's initial publication, later telling friend and artist Corwin Knapp Linson that the
nom de plume was the "commonest name I could think of. I had an editor friend named Johnson, and put in the 't', and no one could find me in the mob of Smiths". Hamlin Garland reviewed the work in the June 1893 issue of
The Arena, calling it "the most truthful and unhackneyed study of the slums I have yet read, fragment though it is". Despite this early praise, Crane became depressed and destitute from having spent $869 for 1,100 copies of a novel that did not sell; he ended up giving a hundred copies away. He would later remember "how I looked forward to publication and pictured the sensation I thought it would make. It fell flat. Nobody seemed to notice it or care for it... Poor Maggie! She was one of my first loves." In March 1893, Crane spent hours in Linson's studio having his portrait painted. He became fascinated with issues of the
Century that were largely devoted to famous battles and military leaders from the
Civil War. Frustrated with the dryly written stories, Crane stated, "I wonder that some of those fellows don't tell how they
felt in those scraps. They spout enough of what they
did, but they're as emotionless as rocks." Crane returned to these magazines during subsequent visits to Linson's studio, and eventually the idea of writing a war novel overtook him. He would later state that he "had been unconsciously working the detail of the story out through most of his boyhood" and had imagined "war stories ever since he was out of
knickerbockers". This novel would ultimately become
The Red Badge of Courage. Crane wished to show how it felt to be in a war by writing "a psychological portrayal of fear". Conceiving his story from the point of view of a young
private who is at first filled with boyish dreams of the glory of war and then quickly becomes disillusioned, Crane borrowed the private's surname, "Fleming", from his sister-in-law's maiden name. He later said that the first paragraphs came to him with "every word in place, every comma, every period fixed". He wrote from around midnight until four or five in the morning. Because he could not afford a typewriter, he wrote carefully in ink on legal-sized paper, seldom crossing through or interlining a word. If he did change something, he would rewrite the whole page. While working on his second novel, Crane remained prolific, concentrating on publishing stories to stave off poverty; "An Experiment in Misery", based on Crane's experiences in the Bowery, was printed by the
New York Press. He also wrote five or six poems a day. In early 1894, he showed some of his poems to Hamlin Garland, who said he read "some thirty in all" with "growing wonder". Although Garland and William Dean Howells encouraged him to submit his poetry for publication, Crane's
free verse was too unconventional for most. After brief wrangling between poet and publisher, Copeland & Day accepted Crane's first book of poems,
The Black Riders and Other Lines, although it would not be published until after
The Red Badge of Courage. He received a 10 percent royalty and the publisher assured him that the book would be in a form "more severely classic than any book ever yet issued in America". In the spring of 1894, Crane offered the finished manuscript of
The Red Badge of Courage to ''
McClure's Magazine, which had become the foremost magazine for Civil War literature. While McClure's
delayed giving him an answer on his novel, they offered him an assignment writing about the Pennsylvania coal mines. "In the Depths of a Coal Mine", a story with pictures by Linson, was syndicated by McClure's'' in a number of newspapers, heavily edited. Crane was reportedly disgusted by the cuts, asking Linson, "Why the hell did they send me up there then? Do they want the public to think the coal mines gilded ball-rooms with the miners eating ice-cream in boiled shirt-fronts?" During the early part of his career, Crane was promoted by
Elbert Hubbard, who commented on his works and featured them in his popular small magazine,
The Philistine. Crane was the guest of honor at the first annual meeting of the Society of Philistines in 1895 when he was relatively unknown. Although Crane was severely teased during the meeting, they remained friendly and their association proved mutually beneficial. Seven of Crane’s poems and a short story were published in the first issue of
The Roycroft Quarterly (another of Hubbard’s magazines) which commemorated the event. In a concluding note, Hubbard commented, "to the mass, he is known, if at all, only as the author of
The Black Riders in verse, and of the
Red Badge of Courage in prose; efforts, both, that challenge study and baffle understanding rather than soothe superficiality or pander to the wishes of mental indolence." Sources report that following an encounter with a male prostitute that spring, Crane began a novel on the subject entitled
Flowers of Asphalt, which he later abandoned. The manuscript has never been recovered. After discovering that ''McClure's
could not afford to pay him, Crane took his war novel to Irving Bacheller of the Bacheller-Johnson Newspaper Syndicate, which agreed to publish The Red Badge of Courage
in serial form. From December 3 to 9, The Red Badge of Courage
was published in some half-dozen newspapers in the United States. Although it was greatly cut for syndication, Bacheller attested to its causing a stir, saying "its quality [was] immediately felt and recognized." The lead editorial in the Philadelphia Press'' of December 7 said that Crane "is a new name now and unknown, but everybody will be talking about him if he goes on as he has begun".
Travels and fame —but not so hard, Steve". At the end of January 1895, Crane left on what he called "a very long and circuitous newspaper trip" to the west. While writing feature articles for the Bacheller syndicate, he traveled to
Saint Louis, Missouri,
Nebraska,
New Orleans,
Galveston, Texas, and
Mexico City. Irving Bacheller would later state that he "sent Crane to
Mexico for new color", which the author found in the form of Mexican slum life. Whereas he found the lower class in New York pitiful, he was impressed by the "superiority" of the Mexican peasants' contentment and "even refuse[d] to pity them". Returning to New York five months later, Crane joined the Lantern (alternately spelled "Lanthom" or "Lanthorne") Club organized by a group of young writers and journalists. The club, located on the roof of an old house on
William Street near the
Brooklyn Bridge, served as a
drinking establishment and was decorated to look like a ship's cabin. There Crane ate one good meal a day, although friends were troubled by his "constant smoking, too much coffee, lack of food and poor teeth", as Nelson Greene put it. Living in near-poverty and greatly anticipating the publication of his books, Crane began work on two more novels:
The Third Violet and ''
George's Mother''.
The Black Riders was published by Copeland & Day shortly before his return to New York in May, but it received mostly negative criticism for the poems' unconventional style and use of free verse. A piece in the
Bookman called Crane "the
Aubrey Beardsley of poetry" and a commentator from the
Chicago Daily Inter-Ocean stated that "there is not a line of poetry from the opening to the closing page.
Whitman's
Leaves of Grass were luminous in comparison. Poetic lunacy would be a better name for the book." In June, the
New York Tribune dismissed the book as "so much trash". Crane was pleased that the book was "making some stir". In contrast to the reception for Crane's poetry,
The Red Badge of Courage was welcomed with acclaim after its publication by
Appleton in September 1895. For the next four months, the book was in the top six on bestseller lists around the country. It arrived on the literary scene "like a flash of lightning out of a clear winter sky", according to
H. L. Mencken, who was about 15 at the time. The novel also became popular in Britain;
Joseph Conrad, a future friend of Crane, wrote that the novel "detonated... with the impact and force of a twelve-inch shell charged with a very high explosive". Appleton published two, possibly three, printings in 1895 and as many as eleven more in 1896. Although some critics considered the work overly graphic and profane, it was widely heralded for its realistic portrayal of war and unique writing style. The
Detroit Free Press declared that
The Red Badge would give readers "so vivid a picture of the emotions and the horrors of the battlefield that you will pray your eyes may never look upon the reality." Wanting to capitalize on the success of
The Red Badge, McClure Syndicate offered Crane a contract to write a series on Civil War battlefields. Because it was a wish of his to "visit the battlefield—which I was to describe—at the time of year when it was fought", Crane agreed. Visiting battlefields in Northern
Virginia, including
Fredericksburg, he would later produce five more Civil War tales: "Three Miraculous Soldiers", "The Veteran", "An Indiana Campaign", "An Episode of War" and "The Little Regiment".
Scandal At the age of 24, Crane, who was reveling in his success, became involved in a highly publicized case involving a suspected prostitute named Dora Clark. At 2 a.m. on September 16, 1896, he escorted two chorus girls and Clark from New York City's Broadway Garden, a popular "resort" where he had interviewed the women for a series he was writing. As Crane saw one woman safely to a
streetcar, a plainclothes policeman named
Charles Becker arrested the other two for
solicitation; Crane was threatened with arrest when he tried to interfere. One of the women was released after Crane confirmed her erroneous claim that she was his wife, but Clark was charged and taken to the precinct. Against the advice of the arresting sergeant, Crane made a statement confirming Dora Clark's innocence, stating that "I only know that while with me she acted respectably, and that the policeman's charge was false." On the basis of Crane's testimony, Clark was discharged. The media seized upon the story; news spread to Philadelphia,
Boston and beyond, with papers focusing on Crane's courage. The "Stephen Crane story", as it became known, soon became a source for ridicule; the
Chicago Dispatch quipped that "Stephen Crane is respectfully informed that association with women in scarlet is not necessarily a 'Red Badge of Courage.'" A couple of weeks after her trial, Clark pressed charges of false arrest against the officer who had arrested her. The next day, the officer physically attacked Clark in the presence of witnesses. Crane, who initially went briefly to Philadelphia to escape the pressure of publicity, returned to New York to give testimony at Becker's trial despite advice given to him from
Theodore Roosevelt, who was
Police Commissioner and a new acquaintance of Crane. The defense targeted Crane: police raided his apartment and interviewed people who knew him, trying to find incriminating evidence to lessen the effect of his testimony. A vigorous cross-examination sought to portray Crane as a man of dubious morals; while the prosecution proved that he frequented brothels, Crane claimed this was merely for research purposes. After the trial ended on October 16, the arresting officer was exonerated, and Crane's reputation was ruined.
Cora Taylor and the Commodore shipwreck Given $700 in Spanish gold by the Bacheller-Johnson syndicate to work as a war correspondent in
Cuba as the Spanish–American War was pending, the 25-year-old Crane left New York on November 27, 1896, on a train bound for
Jacksonville, Florida. Upon arrival in Jacksonville, he registered at the
St. James Hotel under the alias of Samuel Carleton to maintain anonymity while seeking passage to Cuba. He toured the city and visited the local
brothels. Within days he met 31-year-old
Cora Taylor, proprietor of the downtown bawdy house Hotel de Dream. Born into a respectable Boston family, Taylor (whose legal name was Cora Ethel Stewart) had already had two brief marriages; her first husband, Vinton Murphy, divorced her on grounds of adultery. In 1889, she had married British Captain
Donald William Stewart. She left him in 1892 for another man, but was still legally married. By the time Crane arrived, Taylor had been in Jacksonville for two years. She lived a
bohemian lifestyle, owned a hotel of assignation, and was a respected local figure. The two spent much time together while Crane awaited his departure. He was finally cleared to leave for the Cuban port of Cienfuegos on New Year's Eve aboard the
SS Commodore. The ship sailed from Jacksonville with 27 or 28 men and supplies and ammunition for the Cuban rebels. On the
St. Johns River and less than from Jacksonville,
Commodore struck a
sandbar in a dense fog and damaged its hull. Although towed off the sandbar the following day, it was beached again in
Mayport and again damaged. A leak began in the boiler room that evening and, as a result of malfunctioning water pumps, the ship came to a standstill about from Mosquito Inlet. As the ship took on more water, Crane described the engine room as resembling "a scene at this time taken from the middle kitchen of
hades." The
Commodores lifeboats were lowered early on January 2, 1897, and the ship ultimately sank at 7 a.m. Crane was one of the last to leave in a
dinghy. In an ordeal that he recounted in the short story "
The Open Boat", Crane and three other men (including the captain) foundered off the coast of Florida for a day and a half before trying to land the dinghy at
Daytona Beach. The small boat overturned in the surf, forcing the exhausted men to swim to shore; one died. Having lost the gold given to him for his journey, Crane wired Cora Taylor for help. She traveled to Daytona and returned to Jacksonville with Crane the next day, only four days after he had left on the
Commodore. The disaster was reported on the front pages of newspapers across the country. Rumors that the ship had been sabotaged were widely circulated but never substantiated. Portrayed favorably and heroically by the press, Crane emerged from the ordeal with his reputation enhanced, if not restored. Meanwhile, Crane's affair with Taylor blossomed. Archaeological investigations were conducted in 2002–2004 to examine and document the exposed remains of a wreck near
Ponce Inlet, Florida, conjectured to be that of the
SS Commodore. The collected data, and other accumulated evidence, finally substantiated the identification of the
Commodore.
Greco-Turkish War Despite contentment in Jacksonville and the need for rest after his ordeal, Crane became restless. He left Jacksonville on January 11 for New York City, where he applied for a passport to Cuba, Mexico and the West Indies. Spending three weeks in New York, he completed "The Open Boat" and periodically visited Port Jervis to see family. By this time, however, blockades had formed along the Florida coast as tensions rose with Spain, and Crane concluded that he would never be able to travel to Cuba. He sold "The Open Boat" to
Scribner's for $300 in early March. Determined to work as a war correspondent, Crane signed on with
William Randolph Hearst's
New York Journal to cover the impending
Greco-Turkish conflict. He brought along Taylor, who sold the Hotel de Dream. On March 20, they sailed first to England, where Crane was warmly received. They arrived in
Athens in early April; between April 17 (when Turkey declared war on Greece) and April 22, Crane wrote his first published report of the war, "An Impression of the 'Concert'". When he left for
Epirus in the northwest, Taylor remained in Athens, where she became the war's first woman war correspondent. She wrote under the pseudonym "Imogene Carter" for the
New York Journal, a job that Crane had secured for her. They wrote frequently, traveling throughout the country separately and together. The first large battle that Crane witnessed was the Turks' assault on General Constantine Smolenski's Greek forces at Velestino. Crane wrote: "It is a great thing to survey the army of the enemy. Just where and how it takes hold upon the heart is difficult of description." During this battle, Crane encountered "a fat waddling puppy" that he immediately claimed, dubbing it "Velestino, the Journal dog". Greece and Turkey signed an armistice on May 20; Crane and Taylor left Greece for England, taking with them Velestino and two Greek brothers as servants.
Spanish–American War After staying in
Limpsfield, Surrey, for a few days, Crane and Taylor settled in Ravensbrook, a plain brick villa in
Oxted. Referring to themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Crane, the couple lived openly in England, but Crane concealed the relationship from friends and family in the United States. Admired in England, Crane thought himself attacked back home: "There seem so many of them in America who want to kill, bury and forget me purely out of unkindness and envy and—my unworthiness, if you choose", he wrote. Velestino the dog sickened and died soon after their arrival in England, on August 1. Crane, who had a great love for dogs, wrote an emotional letter to a friend an hour after the dog's death, stating that "for eleven days we fought death for him, thinking nothing of anything but his life." The Limpsfield-Oxted area was home to members of the socialist
Fabian Society and a magnet for writers such as
Edmund Gosse,
Ford Madox Ford and
Edward Garnett. Crane also met the Polish-born novelist
Joseph Conrad in October 1897, with whom he would have what Crane called a "warm and endless friendship". Although Crane was confident among peers, strong negative reviews of the recently published
The Third Violet were causing his literary reputation to dwindle. Reviewers were also highly critical of Crane's war letters, deeming them self-centered. Although
The Red Badge of Courage had by this time gone through fourteen printings in the United States and six in England, Crane was running out of money. To survive financially, he wrote prolifically for both the English and the American markets. He wrote in quick succession stories such as
The Monster, "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky", "Death and the Child" and "The Blue Hotel". Crane began to attach price tags to his new works of fiction, hoping that "The Bride", for example, would fetch $175. As 1897 ended, Crane's money crisis worsened.
Amy Leslie, a reporter from
Chicago and a former lover, sued him for $550. The
New York Times reported that Leslie gave him $800 in November 1896 but that he had repaid only a quarter. In February, he was summoned to answer Leslie's claim. The claim was apparently settled out of court, because no record of adjudication exists. Meanwhile, Crane felt "heavy with troubles" and "chased to the wall" by expenses. He confided to his agent that he was $2,000 in debt but that he would "beat it" with more literary output. Soon after the exploded in
Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, under suspicious circumstances, Crane was offered a £60 advance by ''
Blackwood's Magazine'' for articles "from the seat of war in the event of a war breaking out" between the United States and Spain. His health was failing, and it is believed that signs of his
pulmonary tuberculosis, which he may have contracted in childhood, became apparent. With almost no money coming in from his finished stories, Crane accepted the assignment and left Oxted for New York. Taylor and the rest of the household stayed behind to fend off local creditors. Crane applied for a passport and left New York for
Key West two days before Congress declared war. While the war idled, he interviewed people and produced occasional copy. In early June, he observed the establishment of an American base in Cuba when Marines seized
Guantánamo Bay. He went ashore with the Marines, planning "to gather impressions and write them as the spirit moved." Although he wrote honestly about his fear in battle, others observed his calmness and composure. He would later recall "this prolonged tragedy of the night" in the war tale "Marines Signaling Under Fire at Guantanamo". After showing a willingness to serve during fighting at Cuzco, Cuba, by carrying messages to company commanders, Crane was officially cited for his "material aid during the action". He continued to report upon various battles and the worsening military conditions and praised Theodore Roosevelt's
Rough Riders, despite past tensions with the Commissioner. In early July, Crane was sent to the United States for medical treatment for a high fever. He was diagnosed with
yellow fever, then
malaria. Upon arrival in
Old Point Comfort, Virginia, he spent a few weeks resting in a hotel. Although Crane had filed more than 20 dispatches in the three months he had covered the war, the
Worlds business manager believed that the paper had not received its money's worth and fired him. In retaliation, Crane signed with Hearst's
New York Journal with the wish to return to Cuba. He traveled first to
Puerto Rico and then to Havana. In September, rumors began to spread that Crane, who was working anonymously, had either been killed or disappeared. He sporadically sent out dispatches and stories about the mood and conditions in Havana, but he was soon desperate for money again. Taylor, left alone in England, was also penniless. She became frantic with worry over her lover's whereabouts; they were not in direct communication until the end of the year. Crane left Havana and arrived in England on January 11, 1899.
Death Rent on Ravensbrook had not been paid for a year. Crane secured a solicitor to act as guarantor for their debts, after which Crane and Taylor relocated to Brede Place. This manor in Sussex, which dated to the 14th century and had neither electricity nor indoor plumbing, was offered to them by friends at a modest rent. The relocation appeared to give Crane hope, but his money problems continued. Deciding that he could no longer afford to write for American publications, he concentrated on publishing in English magazines. Crane pushed himself to write feverishly during the first months at Brede; he told his publisher that he was "doing more work now than I have at any other period in my life". His health worsened, and by late 1899 he was asking friends about health resorts.
The Monster and Other Stories was in production and
War Is Kind, his second collection of poems, was published in the United States in May. None of his books after
The Red Badge of Courage had sold well, and he bought a
typewriter to spur output.
Active Service, a novella based on Crane's correspondence experience, was published in October. The
New York Times reviewer questioned "whether the author of
Active Service himself really sees anything remarkable in his newspapery hero." In December, the couple held an elaborate Christmas party at Brede, attended by Conrad,
Henry James, H. G. Wells, and other friends; it lasted several days. On December 29 Crane suffered a severe
pulmonary hemorrhage. In January 1900, he had recovered sufficiently to work on a new novel, ''The O'Ruddy'', completing 25 of the 33 chapters. Plans were made for him to travel as a correspondent to
Gibraltar to write sketches from
Saint Helena, the site of a
Boer prison, but in late March and early April, he suffered two more hemorrhages. Taylor took over most of Crane's correspondence while he was ill, writing to friends for monetary aid. The couple planned to travel on the continent but Conrad, upon visiting Crane for the last time, remarked that his friend's "wasted face was enough to tell me that it was the most forlorn of all hopes." On May 28, the couple arrived at
Badenweiler, Germany, a health spa on the edge of the
Black Forest. Despite his weakened condition, Crane continued to dictate fragmentary episodes for the completion of ''The O'Ruddy''. He died on June 5, 1900, at the age of 28. In his will he left everything to Taylor, who took his body to New Jersey for burial. Crane was interred in
Evergreen Cemetery in
Hillside, New Jersey. ==Fiction and poetry==