cover image The Double Life of Stephen Crane: A Biography

The Double Life of Stephen Crane: A Biography

Christopher E. G. Benfey. Knopf Publishing Group, $25 (294pp) ISBN 978-0-394-56864-5

In an effort to clear away the mists surrounding Crane's short life (1871-1899) Benfey ( Emily Dickinson ) advances the interesting hypothesis that Crane's life was foreshadowed and dictated by his fiction. As a reporter Crane experienced the horrors of war (Spanish-American) only after he wrote The Red Badge of Courage ; years before a common-law marriage to a former madam, he wrote Maggie: A Girl of the Streets . Benfey supports his thesis with a detailed analysis of Crane's life and works including the often overlooked poetry ( The Black Riders ) and his less well-known novels and short stories. While he makes a contribution to the evolving scholarly criticism of Crane's writings, his conjectures concerning the writer's life, due to a lack of documentary evidence, remain speculative. Illustrated. (Sept.)