The Red Badge of Courage

First published in 1895, America’s greatest novel  of the Civil War was written before 21-year-old  Stephen Crane had “smelled even the powder of a  sham battle.”

But this powerful psychological  study of a young soldier’s struggle with the  horrors, both within and without, that war strikes the  reader with its undeniable realism and with its  masterful descriptions of the moment-by-moment riot  of emotions felt by me under fire.

Praised for its insight and its intense and unprecedented realism in portraying the experience of men under fire, The Red Badge of Courage has been a beloved bestseller for more than a century.

Ernest Hemingway called the novel an American classic, and  Crane’s genius is as much apparent in his sharp,  colourful prose as in his ironic portrayal of an episode  of war so intense, so immediate, so real that the  terror of battle becomes our own … in a  masterpiece so unique that many believe modern American  fiction began with Stephen Crane.