'THE OPEN BOAT,' 'THE BLUE HOTEL,' 'THE UPTURNED FACE,' AND 'THE BRIDE COMES TO YELLOW SKY' The Red Badge of Courage takes us to a Civil War battlefield and into the mind of a soldier in a way that no author ever had before. A pioneer in the realistic school of American fiction and the true forerunner of Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Crane probed the thoughts and actions of trapped of baited men fighting the destructive forces in nature, in other human beings, and in themselves. Crane's masterpiece and the short stories in this volume showcase his outstanding talent for portraying the violent emotions underlying quiet tension, and they reveal the narrative skill of the author whom Carl Van Doren declared 'one of the clearest cases of genius in American fiction.' This Signet Classics edition, published complete from the original manuscripts, includes and Introduction by James Dickey, whose own powerful accounts of wartime were greatly influenced by Crane. With a New Afterword by Jeffrey Meyers