In 1895 Stephen Crane achieved early fame with his powerful, enigmatic portrayal of a raw recruit's experience of war, The Red Badge of Courage. Although Crane had never experienced battle, he wrote with rare insight and immediacy of his young protagonist's fluctuating emotions, in a style that had a profound influence on American fiction. This selection includes the 1896 coda to the story, 'The Veteran', and the best of Crane's other fiction: the impressionist masterpiece 'The Open Boat'; The Monster, perhaps the most complex and disturbing of all Crane's works; and 'The Blue Hotel; his greatest western story. This edition explores Crane's work from a fresh critical perspective and introduces new research on the imaginative relationship between Crane's novel and the Civil War.