Born inNewark, New Jersey, on November 1, 1871 to Mary Helen Peck Crane, Stephen Crane was the last of fourteen children. His father, the Reverend Dr. Jonathan Townley Crane, was an elder in the District of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Newark and, later, the Methodist pastor in Port Jervis, New York. After his father died in 1880, Crane and his mother moved toAsbury Park, New Jersey, where during the summers he helped his brother, Townley, with his news service.

At fifteen, Crane enrolled at the Hudson River Institute, a lightweight military prep school, but he never developed a fondness for formal education, flunking out of Lafayette College as an engineering student and then dropping out ofSyracuse University after one term. AtSyracuse, however, Crane met Hamlin Garland, the well-known realist writer who influenced Crane's style. Later, he also met and became fast friends with William Dean How-ells, a champion...