Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

First published in 1893, when Stephen Crane was only twenty-one years old, Maggie is the harrowing tale of a young woman’s fall into prostitution and destitution in New York City’s notorious Bowery slum. In dazzlingly vivid prose and with a sexual candour remarkable for his day, Crane depicts an urban sub-culture awash with alcohol and patrolled by the swaggering gangland “tough.” Presented here with its companion piece George’s Mother and a selection of Crane’s other Bowery stories, this edition of Maggie includes a detailed introduction that places the novel in its social, cultural, and literary contexts. The appendices provide an unrivalled range of documentary sources covering such topics as religious and civic reform writing, slum fiction, the “new journalism,” and literary realism and naturalism. An up-to-date bibliography of scholarly work on Crane is also included.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction Stephen Crane: A Brief Chronology A Note on the Text Maggie: A Girl of the Streets Appendix A: Other New York Writings by Stephen Crane George’s Mother (1896) An Experiment in Misery (22 April 1894) An Experiment in Luxury (19 April 1894) An Ominous Baby (9 May 1894) Appendix B: The Slum and Its Reformers From Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890) From Thomas De Witt Talmage, Night Scenes of City Life (1892) From Charles Loring Brace, The Dangerous Classes of New York (1872) Appendix C: Slum Fiction: From Edgar Fawcett, The Evil That Men Do (1889) Appendix D: Crane on Realism and Maggie “Howells Discussed at Avon-by-the-Sea” (August 1891) From a Letter to Lily Brandon Munroe (April 1893) Letter to Ripley Hitchcock (February 1896) Letter to Ripley Hitchcock (10 February 1896) Letter to Ripley Hitchcock (2 April 1896) Appendix E: The New Journalism From William Dean Howells, “The Man of Letters as a Man of Business” (1902) From Davis G. Croly, interview (1875) From Lincoln Steffens, Autobiography (1931) Appendix F: Reviews Hamlin Garland, Arena (June 1893) From William Dean Howells, New York World (26 July 1896) William Dean Howells, Academy (18 August 1900) From Unsigned, Nashville Banner (15 August 1896) From H.D.Traill, Fortnightly Review (1 January 1897) Select Bibliography

About the Author :
Adrian Hunter is Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Stirling.

Review :
“Adrian Hunter’s elegant introduction and judicious selection of essential contextual documents by Crane and his contemporaries make this edition of Maggie wonderfully useful for students, teachers, and interested readers.” — Michael Robertson, The College of New Jersey, author of Stephen Crane, Journalism, and the Making of Modern American Literature “Adrian Hunter’s introduction is elegantly written and solidly researched. Many less perceptive critics have tended to apply broad labels to Crane and his work, but Hunter has provided a wonderfully nuanced and sophisticated analysis of this often neglected text and the complex social and historical context from which it emerges. The edition is intelligently organized and carefully annotated; I found the appendices on reform movements and on slum fiction particularly useful.” — Susan Castillo, King’s College, London