When The Red Badge of Courage appeared in 1895, it won its author immediate critical success; Henry James and Joseph Conrad praised Crane’s stylistic abilities. Without ever having experienced battle first-hand, Stephen Crane had rendered with remarkable acuity the thoughts and sensations of a young man at war. Five years later, at age twenty-eight, Crane was dead, and critical attention to his work waned. The 1950s, however, saw a renewed interest in Crane’s work, and over a century after its initial publication, Crane’s powerful evocation of universal fear and self-discovery speaks to modern readers as strongly as it did to his contemporaries. The Red Badge of Courage establishes Stephen Crane as a writer formally and solidly within the great tradition established and fostered by Homer, Virgil, Milton, and others.