Stephen Crane's 1895 Civil War novel follows young Henry Fleming as he faces his first battle and grapples with fear, courage, and what it means to be a man. This groundbreaking work of American fiction captures the psychological reality of warfare through the eyes of a Union soldier who flees combat, then struggles to redeem himself and understand his own nature.
The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army’s feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills. Once a certain tall soldier developed virtues and went resolutely to wash a shirt. He came flying back from a brook waving his garment bannerlike. He was swelled with a tale he had heard from a reliable friend, who had heard it from a truthful cavalryman, who had heard it from his trustworthy …Continue reading →
A pioneering American novelist and war correspondent who lived from 1871 to 1900, he revolutionized literature with his psychological realism and vivid impressionistic style. Despite dying at just 28, his masterpiece The Red Badge of Courage transformed how war fiction portrayed the inner lives of soldiers, influencing generations of writers. All works by Stephen Crane →
Browse all Fiction · 19th Century works