The Red Badge of Courage (Collector's Library) - Hardcover

Regarded by many as one of the finest American novels, The Red Badge of Courage tells the story of one soldier's experience in the American Civil War, presenting war in a direct, impressionistic way that was innovative at the time and is still influential today. Henry Fleming enlists in the Union Army with dreams of military glory, and discovers real warfare is very different from its fictional portrayal.

Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1871, the youngest son of a Methodist minister. After failing to settle at university, Crane moved to New York where he worked as a journalist and wrote his first novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets in 1893. His second novel, The Red Badge of Courage, was far more successful, critically and commercially, and after its publication in 1895, he travelled as a newspaper correspondent to Mexico, to Cuba, and to Greece. In 1897 he settled in England, where he met Joseph Conrad and Henry James. He died in Germany in 1900, aged twenty-eight.