Maggie: A Girl of the Streets was the first major naturalistic novel in America. This edition reprints the first published version, that of 1893.

Misprints and errors have been corrected and are identified in "A Note on the Text." Footnotes indicate changes in wording Crane made for the 1896 edition and explain slang expressions and customs of the day. Maps of the novel’s New York City locales are also provided.

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets was the first major naturalistic novel in America. This edition reprints the first published version, that of 1893.

Misprints and errors have been corrected and are identified in "A Note on the Text." Footnotes indicate changes in wording Crane made for the 1896 edition and explain slang expressions and customs of the day. Maps of the novel’s New York City locales are also provided.

"Backgrounds and Sources" includes nonfictional accounts of urban life by Jacob Riis and others from which Crane drew, as well as discussions of Crane’s literary sources"The Author and the Novel" traces the history of the novelís composition and revision.Contemporary American reviews of the 1893 Maggie and American and English reviews of the 1896 edition focus on the historical importance of the work, the values and tastes of the 1890s, and Crane’s modernism.

The modern critical essays are by John Berryman, Charles Child Walcutt, William Bysshe Stein, Joseph X. Brennan, Janet Overmyer, Donald Pizer, Joseph Katz, Eric Solomon, Jay Martin, Donald B. Gibson, Arno Karlen, Katherine G. Simoneaux, Frank Bergon, Hershel Parker, Brian Higgins, and Thomas A. Gullason.

Preface

The Text of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (A Story of New York) (1893)

A Note to the Text

Backgrounds and Sources

New York City Locales Mentioned in Maggie

Map of Lower Manhattan

Charles Loring Brace, From The Dangerous Classes of New York

Reverend Thomas De Witt Talmage

From The Evil Beast

From The Night Sides of City Life

Jacob Riis, From How the Other Half Lives

From The Children of the Poor

Benjamin Orange Flower, From Civilization’s Inferno

Lars A!hnebrink, [Zola as Literary Model for Maggie]

Marcus Cunliff, Stephen Crane and the American Backround of Maggie

Thomas A. Gullason, [A Minister, a Social Reformer, and Maggie]

David Fitelson, Stephen Crane’s Maggie and Darwinism

Daniel Aaron, Howells’ "Maggie"

Eric Solomon, [Maggie and the Parody of Popular Fiction]

The Author and the Novel

BIRTH NOTICES, LETTERS, AND INSCRIPTIONS: THE 1893 Maggie

Frank W. Noxon, The Real Stephen Crane

Willis Fletcher Johnson, The Launching of Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane, Howells Discussed at Avon-by-the-Sea

The Broken-Down Van

Summer Dwellers at Asbury Park and Their Doings

Letters and Inscriptions

REBIRTH AND REVISIONS: THE 1893 Maggie

Stephen Crane, Letters

Contemporary Reviews

AMERICAN REVIEWS: 1893

From the Port Jervis [New York] Union

Hamlin Garland, An Ambitious French Novel and A Modest American Story

The Author-Artist Will Soon Issue a Book — Stephen Crane’s "Maggie"

From The Bookman [New York]

Chelifer [Rupert Hughes], The Justification of Slum Stories

AMERICAN REVIEWS: 1896

From the New York Tribune

From The Nation

Frank Norris, Stephen Crane’s Stories of Life in the Slums: Maggie and George’s Mother

Edward Bright, A Melodrama of the Streets

William Dean Howells, New York Low Life in Fiction

ENGLISH REVIEWS: 1896

From The Bookman [London]

From The Athenaeum

H.G. Wells, Another View of "Maggie"

Novels of American Life

Criticism

John Berryman, [Crane’s Art in Maggie]

Charles Child Walcutt, [Hallucination and Hysteria in Maggie]

William Bysshe Stein, New Testament Inversions in Crane’s Maggie

Joseph X. Brennan, Ironic and Symbolic Structure in Crane’s Maggie

Janet Overmyer, The Structure of Crane’s Maggie

Donald Pizer, Stephen Crane’s Maggie and American Naturalism

Joseph Katz, [Art and Compromise: The 1893 and the 1896 Maggie]

Eric Solomon, [Maggie as a Three-Act Drama]

Jay Martin, [Maggie and Satire]

Donald B. Gibson, [The Flawed Maggie]

Arno Karlen, [Lapses and Craft in Crane’s Maggie]

Katherine G. Simoneaux, Color Imagery in Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

Frank Bergon, [The Framework of Maggie]

Hershel Parker and Brian Higgins, Maggie’s "Last Night": Authorial Design and Editorial Patching

Thomas A. Gullason, Tragedy and Melodrama in Stephen Crane’s Maggie

Selected Bibliography