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Background

By March 1893, Stephen Crane had already published his first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, at the age of 21. Maggie was not a success, either financially or critically. Most critics thought the unsentimental Bowery tale crude or vulgar, and Crane was forced to publish the work privately after it was repeatedly rejected for publication.^[1]

Crane quickly found inspiration for his next novel, however, while spending hours lounging in a friend's studio and having his portrait painted regularly. He became fascinated with issues of the magazine Century that were largely devoted to famous battles and military leaders from the Civil War.^[2] Frustrated with the dryly written stories, Crane stated, "I wonder that some of those fellows don't tell how they felt in those scraps. They spout enough of what they did, but they're as emotionless as rocks."^[3] Crane returned to these magazines during subsequent visits to the studio, and eventually the idea of writing a war novel overtook him. He would later state that he "had been unconsciously working the detail of the story out through most of his boyhood" and had imagined "war stories ever since he was out of knickerbockers."^[4]