Stephen Crane

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets was Stephen Crane's first novel. He started working on it in 1891 at Syracuse University, in the fraternity house of Delta Upsilon. When he was finished, he met with the critic and established writer Hamlin Garland. (Colvert xxxv). "This meeting with Garland was a crucial event in Crane's literary career and very probably marks the real beginning of Maggie." (Colvert xxxvi). Crane later gave a friend named Wallis McHarg a copy of his first draft of Maggie. In the first draft, Crane hadn't given the characters any names, just titles such as "the father" and "the woman of brilliance and audacity"(Colvert xxxvii). McHarg's advice was to name the characters and also added that "no one would dare publish a novel about a prostitute." (Colvert xxxvii) In 1892 an editor named Richard Watson Gilder saw the manuscript of Maggie and thought it was "shocking, cruel, and callous, offensive in its lack of sentiment." (Colvert xxxvii). Crane just thought his novel was honest. In 1893 Crane sent it to the Librarian of Congress to get a copyright. He borrowed money and had 1100 copies printed by a firm of religious and medical book publishers, of a revised version of the novel. The publishers refused to have their name of their firm on the novel, and Crane used a different name, Johnston Smith. This is what Crane said about the subject:

"I hunted a long time for some perfectly commonplace name.... I think I asked Wheeler [a newspaper reporter] what he thought was the stupidest name in the world. He suggested Johnson or Smith and Johnston Smith went on the ugly yellow cover of the book by mistake. You see, I was going to wait until all the world was pyrotechnic about Johnston Smith's 'Maggie' and then I was going to flop down like a trapeze performer from the wire and, coming forward with all the modest grace of a consumptive nun, say, I am he friends!" ( Colvert xxxviii)

No bookstores would take any of the 1100 copies except one, Brentano, who only took twelve and returned ten. But there was hope, Garland was sent a copy and liked it, saying “It is a work of astonishingly good style.” ( Colvert xxxix).

People were interested in Maggie only after the success of The Red Badge of Courage in 1894. By 1896 Crane had revised Maggie once again and it was reissued.

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