When I arrived at the Stephen Crane House on a sweltering June morning, I did not go in blind. I had been in the house before—a family friend used to rent the small apartment on the second floor. And in high school I did a research paper about Stephen Crane and his work, a several-month process that included reading The Red Badge of Courage, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, and dozens of his poems. Although I do know a bit about the house and the famous writer that inhabited it, I returned recently and met with Don Stine, President of the Asbury Park Historical Society, to learn more about the history and the current push to preserve the house as a historic landmark and historic destination. For those unfamiliar with Crane’s work, he was an innovative 19th-century writer considered by many to have been ahead of his time. He wrote important works in the realist tradition, and his writing is also considered to be a part of the American naturalism and expressionism movements.Many prolific writers cited Crane as an influence, including Ernest Hemingway, who wrote in 1935, “The good writers are Henry James, Stephen Crane, and Mark Twain.” Crane’s most famous work is The Red Badge of Courage, a war novel set during the American Civil War. The story is praised for its realism, which is a testament to Crane’s imagination and skill level. He was able to pull off the novel despite not having any battle experience.
The
That
House Made aWriter
On the Past and Future of the Stephen Crane House
By Kerri Sullivan