SOURCE: "Brief Articles and Notes: The Sources of Stephen Crane's Maggie," in Philological Quarterly, Vol. XXXVIII, No. IV, October, 1959, pp. 497-502.

In the following essay, Gullason identifies writers—among them Riis—who influenced Stephen Crane's novel Maggie.

For over a half-century, Stephen Crane's Maggie (1893) has been linked with European naturalism, particularly with Zola's L'Assomoir.¹ A single recent critic, Marcus Cunliffe, admits that while one can draw parallels between Maggie and L'Assomoir the most obvious place to search for possible sources "is not Europe but America: not Zola's Paris but Crane's New York." He points to such things as the social consciousness of The Arena (to which Crane contributed two propagandistic tales, "The Men in the Strom," and "An Ominous Baby"); Charles Loring Brace's The Dangerous Classes of New York; and Thomas DeWitt Talmage's sermons. With no definite proof that any of the above-mentioned are influences, Cunliffe concludes: "So...