The youngest of fourteen children, Stephen Crane was born November 1, 1871, in Newark, New Jersey, to a Methodist minister, Jonathan Townley Crane, and Mary Helen (Peck) Crane. His interest in writing developed in part from his parents, who wrote articles of a religious nature, and from two of his brothers, who were journalists. Crane began his higher education in 1888 at Hudson River Institute and Claverack College, a military school where he developed an interest in Civil War studies and military training. Throughout his one-year college experience, he wrote for his brother Townley's news service and began a sketch of his famous first novel, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets while still at Syracuse University. In 1891, he quit school to work full time as a reporter with Townley, and to live in the tenements of New York, where he gained firsthand knowledge of poverty.

In 1893, he privately published...