| 1871 | Stephen Crane is born on November 1 at 14 Mulberry Street, Newark, New Jersey, the last of his parents’ fourteen children. |
| 1878 | Stephen enrolls in school. His father becomes pastor of the Drew Methodist Church in Port Jervis, in upstate New York. |
| 1880 | Stephen’s father dies of heart failure. |
| 1883 | Stephen and his mother move to Asbury Park, a town on the New Jersey coast. |
| 1885 | Concerned about Stephen’s digressions from Methodist teachings , his mother enrolls him at Pennington Seminary, a school where his father had once been the principal. He writes his first story, “Uncle Jake and the Bell-Handle.” Stephen becomes intrigued by the battles of the Civil War and decides to pursue a career in the army. |
| 1888 | In January, Stephen enrolls at the Hudson River Institute, a semi-military school in upstate Claverack, New York. He works as a gossip reporter for his brother Townley’s news agency; his vignettes appear in “On the Jersey Coast,” a column in Townley’s New York Tribune. |
| 1890 | In February, Stephen’s first signed publication, an essay on the Christian virtues of Sir Henry Morton Stanley’s African expedition , appears in the school magazine. In September, he enrolls at Lafayette College, in Pennsylvania, to pursue a more practical profession, mining engineering. He does poorly in his studies and fails a course in theme writing. After one semester, he withdraws from Lafayette. Rudyard Kipling’s The Light That Failed, serialized in Lippincott’s magazine, inspires Stephen to develop his own style of writing. How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis’s groundbreaking expose of the sordid living conditions of New York City’s tenement dwellers, is published. |
| 1891 | Stephen’s mother enrolls him as a “special student” in the Scientific Course at Syracuse University, where she hopes he will be influenced by the school’s strict Methodist codes. He joins the baseball team and transfers his Delta Upsilon fraternity membership from Lafayette. He continues to write for the New York Tribune and publishes a story, “The King’s Favor,” in the University Herald, the Syracuse literary magazine. In June, Stephen leaves Syracuse and joins the Tribune as a seasonal reporter In August, he meets Hamlin Garland, a radical-minded young writer and critic from Boston, after he writes a review of Garland’s lecture on William Dean Howells at Avon-by-theSea , New Jersey. Garland will have a profound influence on Stephen’s development as a writer. |
| 1892 | In July, five of Stephen Crane’s anecdotal stories about his camping and fishing trips in Sullivan County, New York, are published in the Tribune. He is dismissed from his job when his report of a parade of workers in Asbury Park embarrasses Whitelaw Reid, the Tribune’s owner and a U.S. vice presidential candidate. In the fall, Crane moves to New York to work for the Herald. |
| 1893 | Maggie is published at Crane’s expense, under the pseudonym Johnston Smith. The novel catches the eye of Garland and William Dean Howells, both literary realists, who befriend Crane. In April, Crane begins to write The Red Badge of Courage. |
| 1894 | In late February, Crane and a friend dress in rags, wait in a bread line, and spend the night in a flophouse—experiences that inspire the stories “An Experiment in Misery” and “The Men in the Storm”; these pieces are published in the New York Press and The Arena, respectively. In the spring, Crane begins another New York novel, George’s Mother. An abridged version of The Red Badge of Courage is published in the Philadelphia Press and other newspapers in December. Crane writes “A Night at the Millionaire’s Club,” a mocking dig at the snobbish club members. |
| 1895 | He tours the American West and Mexico as a roving reporter for the Bacheller-Johnson Syndicate. He meets author Willa Cather in Lincoln, Nebraska. His experiences out West will inspire two of his best-known stories, “The Bride Comes to |
| Yellow Sky” (1897) and “The Blue Hotel” (1898). Upon his return from Mexico, he settles in Hartwood, New York. Appleton publishes The Red Badge of Courage in October. Cuba, rebelling against rule by Spain, declares “Independence or death.” The United States increases its involvement in resolving the Spanish-Cuban conflict. The Black Riders, Crane’s first book of verse, is published. | |
| 1896 | The Red Badge of Courage receives critical acclaim—Crane wins recognition from Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells. “The Veteran ,” a short story that features the protagonist of The Red Badge of Courage as an old man, is published in McClure’s Magazine in June and collected in The Little Regiment and Other Episodes of the American Civil War. In November, Crane travels to Jacksonville, Florida, as a newspaper correspondent covering the Cuban insurrection against Spain; he tries to book passage on a vessel that will run the blockade of the island. He checks into the St. James Hotel under the name Samuel Carleton and arranges passage to Cuba on the Commodore. He meets Cora Stewart, the wellmannered , literary-minded owner of the Hotel de Dream brothel, who will become his common-law wife. George’s Mother is published, and Maggie is reissued in its original form. |
| 1897 | On January 1, Crane embarks on the Commodore, which sinks on January 2. Crane and three others escape in a dinghy and reach Florida’s east coast on the morning of January 3. On January 7 Crane publishes a newspaper account of the sinking. While recuperating, he composes “The Open Boat,” which recounts the thirty hours spent in the dinghy; the story is first published in the June issue of Scribner’s Magazine. Crane serves as a correspondent during the brief Greco-Turkish War. He and Cora move to England; he is welcomed into the literary circle of Ford Madox Ford and Henry James, and meets Joseph Conrad , who becomes a close friend. |
| 1898 | The United States declares war on Spain. Crane returns to the United States to become a war correspondent for the New York World. The Open Boat and Other Stories is published. |
| 1899 | In January, Crane returns to England and moves with Cora to Brede Place, an ancient manor in Sussex. The couple exchanges visits with Henry James, the Conrads, Ford, and the |
| Wellses, often at Lamb House, James’s cottage in Rye. While working on his novel The O‘Ruddy, Crane falls ill with tuberculosis . In December, he is debilitated with severe hemorrhaging of the lungs. His second book of verse, War Is Kind, is published , as is The Monster and Other Stories. | |
| 1900 | Despite his deteriorating health, Crane continues to work on The O’Ruddy and other short pieces. In the spring, while in Badenweiler , Germany, he collapses. Cora checks him into a sanitarium , where he dies on June 5 . Wounds in the Rain, a collection of Cuban war stories, is published after his death, as is Whilomville Stories, a childhood memoir. |
| 1903 | The O’Ruddy, an Irish romance completed after Crane’s death by Robert Barr, is published. |
| 1923- 1925 | A biography of Crane is published. Willa Cather and H. L. Mencken are among the writers who create introductions to a new twelve-volume collection of Crane’s work. |
| 1950- 1970 | Author John Berryman’s biography and R. W Stallman’s anthology of Crane’s best work are published, as is a complete edition of his works by the University Press of Virginia. Crane is generally recognized as one of the major forces in modern American literature. |