Thomas A. Gullason

Critics call Stephen Crane, who is best known for his Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, the first "modern" American writer. Crane was only twenty-eight when he died, but his work had a profound influence on American letters. He helped to kill sentimentality in American writing, giving this country&;s fiction renewed strength and dignity as an art form. Crane is considered the American counterpart of such European Nationalists as Zola, Tolstoy,...