Stephen Crane was an American poet, novelist and short story writer who worked in the Realist tradition and helped open the way for American Naturalism. He is best known for The Red Badge of Courage, his 1895 Civil War novel about a young soldier's fear in battle, and for Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, an 1893 Bowery tale. He also wrote short stories such as "The Open Boat" and "The Blue Hotel", and he died of tuberculosis in a German sanatorium in 1900 at the age of 28.
