CRANE, STEPHEN goo), American author, the 14th child of Jonathan Crane, Methodist pastor, was born in Newark (N.J.), on Nov. 1, 1871. Crane attended Lafayette and Syracuse universities but took no degree. He began newspaper work at an early age. He published his first book, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, under a pseudonym at his own expense. This novel attracted no attention but Crane's next work, The Red Badge of Courage (1895), a remarkable study of the psychology of courage, laid in the American Civil War, immediately made him famous and has been widely imitated. Ambrose Bierce said of it : "This young man has the power to feel. He knows nothing of war, yet he is drenched in blood. Most beginners who deal with this sub ject spatter themselves with ink." When Crane published this story he had never witnessed a battle, but his pictures of soldiers were so veracious and convincing that he was at once engaged as a war correspondent by various American and later by English periodicals. He served with a Cuban filibustering expedition, in the Graeco-Turkish War and in the Spanish-American War. On the filibustering expedition the vessel that carried Crane was ship wrecked, and he suffered great hardships on his way back to Flor ida. His privations undermined his health and led to his early death, but they furnished the material for The Open Boat, an account of his experiences that H. G. Wells called "the finest short story in the English language." For several years Crane lived in England, at Brede in Sussex, and became a friend of Joseph Conrad. He was preparing to visit St. Helena as a special writer for the London Morning Post when he was seized with his fatal illness. He died of consumption in Baden, on June 5, 1900, and was buried in the cemetery of Eliza beth, New Jersey. His birthplace in Newark, acquired as a memo rial by the Stephen Crane Association, is marked with a tablet. Crane was described as "typically American, long and spare, with very straight hair and features, and long, quiet hands and hollow eyes, moving slowly, smiling and speaking slowly." His work falls into three groups—novels, short stories and sketches, and verse. In his fiction he was one of the earliest of American realists. Among his short stories The Blue Hotel and a series of tales of American boys, the Whilomville Stories, are particularly memorable. Crane was a pioneer in writing free verse, and his epigrammatic tang in Black Riders and War Is Kind has rarely been equalled. Of his work as a whole Arnold Bennett has said, "In my opinion Crane must rank with the best writers that America has produced, and as one of the finest de scriptive experts of modern times." Some of his other books are : George's Mother (1896) ; The Little Regiment (1896) ; The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure (1898); The Monster See Vincent Starrett, Bibliography of Stephen Crane (Philadelphia, 1923) ; Thomas Beer, Stephen Crane (1923) ; Complete Works, 12 vols. edit. Wilson Fottett (1925-26) ; also biographical introduction to the new edition of The Red Badge of Courage (1925). (M. J. H.)