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Using Crane's Name

I have written a book and am requesting permission to use the name of Stephen Crane in my book. Following is the quote taken from the book: "The writer, Stephen Crane, died without hope. May I spread hope to all before they die."

Donna Clem
10/23/06

The idea that one would need permission to mention a person's name in a book or that the Stephen Crane Society somehow is authorized to grant anyone permision to mention Crane's name is somewhat cryptic. Even more intriguing is the statement that Crane died without hope without hope of what?

--Stanley Wertheim, 10/29/06

Stephen Crane and Stephen Crane

How was Stephen Crane related to the Stephen Crane (New Jersey patriot, 1709-1780) for whom he was named? And what is The Crane Log and where could I get a copy of it?

Thank you,
M. Meyer, minnegeneal at comcast dot net 10/23/06

The Crane Log is a documentary history of Stephen Crane published in 1995. You can find it in many libraries, and it's available in paperback for about $20. As of 10/23/06, it's not available at Barnes & Noble or Powell's, but Amazon.com , and Abebooks.com have the paperback listed; half.com has the hardcover for about $75.

"Stephen Crane's Own Story" and "The Open Boat"

I just re-read The Open Boat. My copy has a footnote about Crane's newspaper account of the same incident. Does anyone know how I can get a hold of a copy of this account?
David Borst 8/23/06

This is available online; the link is on our FAQ page.
Stephen Crane Relative

I am related to Stephen Crane. My grandmother is Irene Crane, and my great grandmother was Irene T. Crane. Stephen Crane is a great-great-great-great uncle. :)

Elana I. Philipsheck

Thank you. This may help others who are searching for ancestral links to Crane.

Copyright and Red Badge

I am creating a theatrical adaptation of The Red Badge of Courage. Is there any way to find a copy of the text that is not 'edited' or 'annotated' and therefore not copyrighted? Or do I have to simply pick one edited version and obtain permission from the publisher of that edition? Thank you for any assistance you may be able to offer.

Drew Leary, learydrew at yahoo.com

8/23/06

 

Crane in Pennsylvania and New York

I publish Milford Magazine, in Milford, Pennsylvania. We are interested in Stephen Crane's time in and around Milford, Pike County, Pennsylvania, and Port Jervis and Orange County, New York. We would like to be in touch with a Crane scholar particularly familiar with his time here. If you can help, please let us know. thanks. Sean Strub, Strubco@aol.com

7/23/06

In the summer of 1891 and for four or five years afterward in August, Crane camped together with a number of friends in Pike County, Pennsylvania, usually at Twin Lakes near Milford. The Pike County Puzzle is a product of his 1894 camping experience there. Crane spent part of his childhood in Port Jervis, Orange County, New York, and at intervals as an adult lived there with his brother William and with another brother in nearby Hartwood in Sullivan County. For a full record of these experiences, I would recommend The Crane Log: A Documentary Life of Stephen Crane (1994).

--Stanley Wertheim, 8/2/06

Crane a nihilist?

I have been reading some of Stephen Crane's short pessimistic poems about life and I was wondering if Crane would be considered a nihilist. Thanks.
Eric Heart 5/31/06

Yes.

--Stanley Wertheim, 6/8/06

French translation of Red Badge?

When was the first French translation of the RED BADGE? How was it initially, and subsequently received in France (especially pre-1945)? Is there some specific discussion somewhere of its popularity -- and reception in France?

MT michael trittm.tritt@marianopolis.edu 5/31/06

Henry D. Davray and Francis Viellé-Griffin's translation of The Red Badge of Courage under the title of La Conquête du courage (1911) was uninspired and is sometimes said to be responsible for Crane's lack of reputation in France. Crane remains more or less unknown in France, despite Jean Cazemajou's exhaustive and excellent study, Stephen Crane (1871 1900): Écrivain- Journaliste. Paris:: Librairie Didier, 1969.

--Stanley Wertheim

6/3/06

Manuscript of The Black Riders

Hello

I want to see a visual image of what the pages of Crane's poem book BLACK RIDERS looks like in one of the earliest manuscripts

or

I want a good description

Can you direct me to a web source for this visual INFO?

Thanks

John McKernan

mckernan@marshall.edu

5/8/06

I don't know of any web site that actually shows a photograph of pages from the first edition of The Black Riders. However, the book is not rare, and many reference libraries have copies, even if they don't have Crane collections. There are copies of the book in the Library of Congress, The New York Public Library, Columbia U, NYU, the U of Virginia, Syracuse U, Lafayette College, Dartmouth, and many other institutions.

The first edition consisted of 68 untitled  poems, each printed on a separate page, preceded by a Roman numeral, and entirely in capital letters

In The Black Riders: The Visible Language of Modernism (1993), Jerome J. McGann attempted to demonstrate the relationship between the graphic and typographical design of the book and its critical reception. Unfortunately, like most literary critics, McGann was apparently not a bibliophile, and the book he described was actually the British edition published by Heinemann in November 1896 rather than the first edition published in Boston by Copeland & Day in May 1895.

--Stanley Wertheim, 5/18/06

More copyright questions

Question: Are Stephen Crane's New York City newspaper articles and his War dispatches originally published in newspapers in the public domain?

P. Paradis
4/7/06

The question of whether Stephen Crane's articles and war dispatches published in newspapers are in the public domain is somewhat tricky. Crane's journalistic productions were often syndicated, usually by the Bacheller Syndicate or the McClure syndicate. Consequently, there are multiple texts of the same article and multiple titles for these articles. The original appearances of an article would be in the public domain, but if a modern editor publishes a syncretic version based on a number of varied texts, as is often the case, this would not be in the public domain.
--Stanley Wertheim, 4/13/06
Crane's letters

Are there any of Stephen Crane's letters in the public domain?
P.M. Paradis 3/25/06

In United States copyright law, private papers such as letters, diaries, and journals are never in the public domain but remain the property of the author and his heirs in perpetuity.
--Stanley Wertheim, 3/25/06

Crane genealogy?

My deceased father, Frank Corwin Miller, who was born in 1924 always told me that he was a cousin of Stephen Crane through his mother Edna May Brown (married name). But I can't figure out which of Stephen Crane's siblings she was descendant from. Do you know where I might find such information?

Lynn Carol Miller 3/24/06

An issue of the journal Stephen Crane Studies 4.1 (1995) entitled "Stephen Crane's Family Heritage" is devoted to an exhaustive study of Crane family genealogy by Robert K. Crane, grandson of Stephen's brother Wilbur. This journal may be found in research libraries or write Professor Paul Sorrentino, English Department, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24060.
--Stanley Wertheim, 3/25/06
******************
Note: If you don't have access to a research library or to Interlibrary Loan, you can also order back issues of Stephen Crane Studies directly by using the mail-in form at this site. (http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/crane/scsform.htm)
--Donna Campbell, 3/25/06

"The Pike County Puzzle"

The Pluralistic Philosophy of Stephen Crane by Patrick K Dooley mentions on page XV and 210 The Pike County Puzzle. Is this one of his books and if so does anyone know anything about it or where I can find it? Thank You!!!

Agnes Burkart, agnesb@Ptd.net 3/21/06

The Pike County Puzzle is not a book but a four-page burlesque newspaper written by Crane with the assistance of his friend Louis Senger on their return to Port Jervis, New York, from a month-long camping trip in the summer of 1894. Crane camped with Frederic Lawrence, Louis C. Senger, Corwin Knapp Linson, Wickham W. Young, and other friends, mostly from Port Jervis and Middletown, New York, at Twin Lakes in Pike County, Pennsylvania. The trip was organized by Mrs. Charles M. Lawrence to celebrate the graduation of her son Frederic, Crane's Delta Upsilon fraternity brother at Syracuse University. The Pike County Puzzle was a souvenir for the Lawrence group. It is dated 28 August 1894, the day that the campers returned, and was privately printed by the job department of the Port Jervis Union. The Puzzle is a parody of small-town newspapers that recorded trivial events in detail, working in as many of the names of residents as possible and chastising their rivals for inaccuracies. There are jibes at the Weekly Hearth-Rug, the Manayunk Cloud-burst, the Curry Ear-Trumpet, and the Misleading Record. There are spoofs of concerts, baseball games, and other events at the camp. A reprint of the Puzzle can be found in Vol. 10 of The Works of Stephen Crane., ed. Fredson Bowers. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1969 1976.

--Stanley Wertheim, 3/24/06

Crane and Copyright

I'm hoping to include a poem by Mr. Crane in a fictional manuscript. I assume I need copyright permsission for the inclusion. If so, do you know whom I'd contact?

If it matters the poem is...
42

I walked in a desert.
And I cried:
Ah, God, take me from this place!
A voice said: It is no desert.
I cried: Well, but
The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon.
A voice said: It is no desert.

Michael Cooper 2/28/06

Stephen Crane's literary works are in the common domain. No copyright permission is required to reproduce them.

--Stanley Wertheim 3/9/06

 

Stephen Crane and Walter Crane

My husband is related to Sir Walter Crane the artist and I wonder if you know if Stephen Crane was related to him in any way. If not I would be grateful if you could pass this on to someone else who might know.

 June Daviss 2/28/06

Stephen Crane was not related to the artist Walter Crane.

--Stanley Wertheim, 3/9/06

********

My husband is also related to Walter Crane(query June Daviss).If any relatives want to get in touch, Please do!Annabel Emslie a1emslie@hotmail.com

Worth of an Edition of The Red Badge of Courage

Hello, someone gave me a gift of this title [Red Badge of Courage] recently and I was hoping you might be able to put a value on it.

It is the 1944 edition published specifically for the Heritage Club - it comes in a slipcase with illustrations by John Steuart Curry - and actually has the accompanying Heritage Club Sandglass newsletter.

I was aware of the book and its status in US literature, but if you can shed some light on this particular edition, I'd be very grateful.

 

Ronan Gallagher, grattancourt at eircom dot net 2/21/06

In the 1940's and 1950's the George Macy Company published richly illustrated works of classic literature at an affordable price under the Heritage Club imprint, drawing heavily on illustrations done for the Limited Editions Club. The Red Badge of Courage was published by the Limited Editions Club in 1944, limited to 1,000 leather-bound copies, with illustrations by John S. Currey. The text of this edition is based on the Appleton edition of 1925. The Heritage Club edition is a less expensive reprint of the Limited Editions Club edition. While it is an attractive book, it has no special importance bibliographically or bibliophilically.
--Stanley Wertheim, 2/23/06
Crane's supernatural stories

In the afterword to _The Wind in the Rose-Bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural_, Alfred Bendixen names Crane as one of Mary Wilkins Freeman's contemporaries who wrote supernatural stories. Could you tell me which of Crane's stories, if any, depict supernatural phenomena?

Thank you,
J. Callaghan
callaghanjf@hotmail.com 2/20/06

Crane wrote two newspaper sketches based on stories dealing with legends of spectral manifestations on the New Jersey shore that he had heard from local residents during his youth in Asbury Park. "Ghosts on the New Jersey Coast" appeared in the New York Press on 11 November 1894. "The Ghostly Sphinx of Metedeconk," printed in the New York Press on 13 January 1895, was probably written in 1891 or 1892. It recounts the legend of a specter of a young woman dressed in white who haunts a beach near Metedeconk, New Jersey, searching for the body of her lover, a ship s captain who was drowned in 1815. "A Tale of Mere Chance" was syndicated by Bacheller, Johnson and Bacheller on 15 March 1896. This grotesque story of murder and detection with overtones of the supernatural seems to be a parody of Edgar Allan Poe s "The Tell-Tale Heart." Only fragments survive of The Ghost, a musical comedy, farce, and burlesque based on legends of the haunting of Brede Place, which was performed once in the Brede Village schoolhouse on the evening of 28 December 1899 and never published.

--Stanley Wertheim, 2-21-06

"In a Park Row Restaurant": Real-life location?

Could you or one of your members answer the following question? In "Stephen Crane: New York Sketches" there is, starting on p. 83, a piece titled "In a Park Row Restaurant." The editorial note says that the restaurant was the Boeuf-a-la-Mode on Sixth Avenue, jokingly known to Crane and other patrons as the Buffalo Mud. Park Row and Sixth Avenue are nowhere near each other, so I am puzzled by this, especially as the restaurant described does seem quite like the cheap lunch rooms clustered along Park Row. I am a book critic at the NY Times and am working on a history of New York restaurants, hence the interest. Thanks.

William Grimes, grimes at nytimes.com, 2/11/06

According to Crane's friend, the artist Corwin Knapp Linson, on Saturday nights in 1893-1894 Crane and his bohemian friends would gather at a Sixth Avenue "Cheap John" restaurant called the Boeuf-a-la-mode where "absolute liberty of emotion was allowed and where a table could break out into song and wild gayety without annoying any one particularly . . . . We Americanized its French name into the Buffalo Mode, and once each week we carried our troubles to its murky atmosphere and joyous company." The Park Row establishment depicted in the sketch apparently resembled this popular gathering place.

--Stanley Wertheim, 2/12/06

Standard edition of Crane's works?

Is there a standard edition to use when writing on Crane's works?
Brian Croxall, 2-10-06

There is the University Press of Virginia edition of The Works of Stephen Crane, 10 vols. Ed. Fredson Bowers, 1969 1975. Since many of Crane's works were syndicated in newspapers, the synthetic texts of these works are usually considered acceptable. However, synthetic texts for separately published books such as Maggie and The Red Badge of Courage have generally been rejected by scholars in favor of corrected texts of the first editions.
--Stanley Wertheim, 2/13/06
Crane photographs that don't require copyright permission?

I am an editor with a daily newspaper in Daytona Beach, Fl., where Crane once stayed. We would like to use a picture of him. Do you know of any photographs that do not require copyright permission? Do you have one you could send?
Thanks,
Cory Lancaster 2/2/06

Copyright permission is not required to reproduce photographs of Stephen Crane. It is a conventional courtesy to cite the location of collections from which photographs are reproduced. The libraries of Syracuse University, Columbia University, the University of Virginia, and the Johns Hopkins University have extensive collections of Stephen Crane photographs.
--Stanley Wertheim, 2/11/06
Film Version of "The Open Boat"

I am trying to find a film version of "The Open Boat", that I am told was made around 1974. Do you know if this film was made, and if so, who produced it? Thanks. I'd like to watch it.

L. Ball 1-8-06

The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) entry on Stephen Crane doesn't list such a movie, but if anyone has more information, please send it to the site.

*****

There is a film tilted "Stephen Crane and the Commodore" which was produced in Daytona Beach, Florida (near where Crane came ashore after the Commodore sank). It dramatises the story of Crane's adventure and relates it to the story "The Open Boat." It's sold at the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse in Ponce Inlet (referred to as the Mosquito Light/Inlet in the story), as well as the Southeast Museum in Daytona.It's entertaining.

Frank Bonjione 2-2-06

Notice of Movie: "The Upturned Face"

There is a filmed version of "The Upturned Face" available for free on Google Video at:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7247442690161279213&q=upturned+face

Edward Folger 1/28/06

Comments to campbelld at wsu dot edu.