Stephen Crane’s weirdly impressionistic The Red Badge of Courage is one of the first non-romantic novels of the Civil War—and the first non­romantic account to gain wide popularity. Paul Sorrentino introduces Red Badge to a new generation of readers for a fuller appreciation of the novel and its effects. He has selected as his text the first edition, published by D. Appleton & Co. in 1895.

Paul Sorrentino is Professor of English at Virginia Tech. He is the editor of The Correspondence of Stephen Crane and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for a forthcoming biography of Crane.