From this opening, we meet Jimmy’s family, the Johnsons contemptible, drunken father, imperious, drunken mother, doomed baby Tommy, and Maggie herself. The story opens, and the mood is set with young Jimmy, (Maggie’s older brother) in a brutal street fight against other Bowery children. Maggie is the first novella in the collection. Maggie established Crane as a writer’s writer - usually more appreciated by others of his craft than by the paying public. Unfortunately, his hard look at the hypocrisy and squalor of the city, and his absolute refusal to soften his story with any hint of redemption or happy ending proved too grim for contemporary audiences. Eschewing all romanticism and sentimentality, he produced a masterpiece of American Naturalism, brutal and brilliant. Stephen Crane wrote Maggie, A Girl of the Streets when he was just twenty-two.
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