The Red Badge of Courage
An Episode of the American Civil War
Stephen Crane 1895
This novel follows Henry Fleming, a young Union soldier facing his first battles in the American Civil War. After fleeing a battle, he envies wounded soldiers whose injuries seem to prove their courage.
169 pages 3h 16m reading time
- One of the most important American war novels, and an early classic of modern war fiction.
- Shows war from inside the mind of one ordinary soldier, focusing on his fear, pride, and confusion rather than on generals or famous battles.
- Suggests that courage and cowardice are not fixed parts of a person, and that a soldier can be driven by panic, shame, or the crowd as much as by bravery.
- Its realistic picture of battle was written by an author who had never been to war, and it became a model for later war writers such as Ernest Hemingway.
- Its title gave English the phrase "red badge of courage," still used to mean a wound or hardship that proves someone's bravery.
Sold for about ninety dollars
Crane first sold a heavily shortened version to a newspaper service, which ran it in papers in 1894.
Built from old soldiers' stories
Crane studied veterans' memories of the war in magazines and listened to old soldiers talk about battle.
A real battle in disguise
The battle is never named, but it closely matches Chancellorsville, a real 1863 battle in Virginia.
Praised in Britain first
Strong praise from British reviewers helped turn the book into a bestseller back in America.