One of the greatest works of American literature, The Red Badge of Courage gazes fearlessly into the bright hell of war through the eyes of one young soldier, the reluctant Henry Fleming. Written by Stephen Crane at the age of twenty-one, the novel imagines the Civil War's terror and loss with an unblinking vision so modern and revolutionary that, upon publication, critics hailed it as a work of literary genius.

"As to 'masterpiece,' there is no doubt that The Red Badge of Courage is that."
   

"The Red Badge of Courage has long been considered the first great 'modern' novel of war by an American-the first novel of literary distinction to present war without heroics and this in a spirit of total irony and skepticism. What makes [it] so remarkable, and a pioneer in the literature of war, is that it was written entirely from instinct by a young newspaperman in his early twenties who had never seen a war."
   ALFRED KAZIN

"With The Red Badge of Courage, Crane burst upon the American public with the effect of a Civil War projectile lain dormant beneath a city square for thirty years. That The Red Badgewas widely read during Crane's own time was a triumph of his art."
   RALPH ELLISON