Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

<p>First published in 1893, when Stephen Crane was only twenty-one years old, <em>Maggie</em> 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.</p><p>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.</p>