Stephen Crane: Biography

Stephen Crane was born in New Jersey on November 1, 1871, and grew up in New York. Crane was the 14th and youngest child of a Methodist minister. Five of his siblings died when they were still children, and his father died when he was only eleven. His family was both very religious and literary. Out of all of the family members before Crane, his mother was said to be the most talented. Crane taught himself how to read and write by the time he was three years old. Crane attended Syracuse University but did not graduate. By the age of 16, Crane worked as a journalist for the"New York Tribune", and it wasn't until he was fired that he started to write and publish novels and short stories. He published his first novel, Maggie: a Girl on the Streets, when he was 22 years old. He had to print this work with his own money, seeing as it was about prostitution and many publishers found his book to be too "ugly". Between the ages of 22 and 28, Crane wrote over a dozen short stories and novels. Crane moved to England where he developed tuberculosis in the year 1900, and died at only 28 years old.