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Henry Fleming, a raw Union Army recruit in the American Civil War, is anxious to confirm his patriotism and manhood - to earn his "badge of courage." But, his dreams of heroism and invulnerability are soon shattered when he flees the Confederate enemy during his baptism of fire and then witnesses the horrible death of a friend. Plunged unwillingly into the nightmare of war, Fleming survives by sheer luck and instinct. This edition of Stephen Crane's poignant classic is supplemented by five of his acclaimed short stories as well as selected poetry, offering the full range of this great American author's extraordinary talent.

Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American novelist, poet and journalist. The eighth surviving child of highly devout parents—his father was a Methodist minister and his mother was a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union—Crane was mostly raised by his older siblings in various parts of New Jersey. After attending several post-secondary institutions, including Claverack College, Lafayette College, and Syracuse University, he left schooling behind and traveled to New York to work as a reporter of slum life.

Crane's first novel was 1893's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, which he followed with numerous short stories, poems, and accounts of war, all of which earned him praise but did not bring him the great acclaim he received for his 1895 Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage. Capitalizing on the novel's success, Crane became a highly paid war correspondent, covering conflicts in Greece and Cuba for newspaper tycoons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. During the last year of his life he took refuge in the south of England, where he lived with his common-law wife, Cora Taylor, the former madam of a Jacksonville brothel. Plagued by exhaustion and ill health, Stephen Crane died of tuberculosis in a sanatorium in the Black Forest at the age of twenty-eight. Today he is considered one of the most innovative writers to emerge in the United States during the 1890s and one of the founders of Literary realism.