Maggie: A Girl of the Streets: and Other Tales of New York (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Stephen Crane (Author), Larzer Ziff (Contributor)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Classics | Publication Date: August 1, 2000

This unflinching portrayal of the squalor and brutality of New York life produced a scandal when it was published in 1893. Crane's novel tells the story of Maggie Johnson, a young woman who, seduced by her brother's friend and then disowned by her family, turns to prostitution. More than the tale of a young woman's tragic fall, this is a powerful exploration of the destructive forces underlying urban society and human nature. Also included here is "George's Mother", along with eleven other tales and sketches of New York writers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The informative introductions, illustrations, and an excellent short bibliography make this a very useful book for both specialists and students from high school to the university level." --Choice

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap

Stephen Crane's first novel is the tale of a pretty young slum girl driven to brutal excesses by poverty and loneliness. It was considered so sexually frank and realistic, that the book had to be privately printed at first. It and GEORGE'S MOTHER, the shorter novel that follows in this edition, were eventually hailed as the first genuine expressions of Naturalism in American letters and established their creator as the American apostle of an artistic revolution which was to alter the shape and destiny of civilization itself. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140437975
• ISBN-13: 978-0140437973
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #290,699 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Easy Read with Power and Dark Humor, December 5, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Utah) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (Norton Critical Editions) (Paperback)

If I were pressed to use one word to describe this book itwould be dark. However, Crane's novel is a moving piece with momentsof transcendence and rampant dark humor.

Basically, it is the story of Maggie, an undeveloped character who takes the back-seat to her loud and abusive parents, her swaggering, self-confident brother Jimmie and his friend, the boastful Pete.

The novel chronicles the injustices that surround Maggie, who is quiet and doesn't fight back. A chilling look at poor, urban life in the late 1800's, it is also a tale critical of society's judgmentality and questioning of morality. A more complex novel than it seems on first look, it is wonderful to take apart and examine the relationship between Maggie and Pete, Maggie and her mother, and Maggie and Jimmie.

Most importantly, however, are the quiet moments of transcendence in this novel.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Blossom in a Mud Puddle, February 11, 2008

By 

Borowy26 "Hank" (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets: and Other Tales of New York (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

I reread Stephen Crane's "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets" yesterday. It was the first time that I had revisited the book in almost thirty years. Originally, I read Crane's writings in a seminar course which compared his pioneering works to those of Ernest Hemingway. There were common themes in the works of both authors and they both employed a naturalistic style. Crane was more poetic, however, while Hemingway was more workmanlike in his choice of words and phrases.

This tragic story takes place in the slums and the garment district. Maggie is the daughter of two alcoholic Irish immigrants. Her youngest brother dies during early childhood. Her older brother spends his youth fighting rivals in the streets and enduring beatings at the hands of his intoxicated parents at home. In adulthood, Jimmie becomes a teamster and introduces his sister to his friend Pete, a well dressed local bartender. Pete is taken with Maggie's shape and begins courting her. Eventually, Maggie quits her five dollars a week job at the cuff and collar factory and leaves home with Pete. This ill considered decision is the beginning of her ruin. Pete cares nothing for Maggie. She is a only a passing fancy.

Environment determines everything in this sad tale. Alcoholic rages and casual acts of random violence occur on almost every page. Crane employs dialect to reflect the speech patterns of his characters. When Pete abandons Maggie for Nellie, a stylish prostitute, the saddest line of dialogue is Maggie's question: "Where kin I go?" Disowned by her widowed mother, who is herself a frequent defendant in the police courts on account of her drunken behavior, and brother, whose own relations with women are not much better than those of Pete, for having gone to the devil, Maggie begins walking the pavements alone and becomes one of the scarlet legions.

Initially, Crane had to self publish this book since it was considered to coarse and profane to print. It proved to be unprofitable and he gave many copies of the limited first printing away. Unlike "The Red Badge of Courage," there is no place for heroism and redemption in the Bowery streets inhabited by Maggie, Jimmie and Pete. This sad account of an unfortunate woman driven into a life of prostitution is far removed from the nightly celebrations at the opulent Everleigh Club.

It is humbling to think that Crane was capable of creating such a novella while he was scarcely over the age of twenty and that all of his poetry and prose was completed before his death at the age of twenty-eight.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Naturalism to the tee....., October 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (Fawcett Premier Book) (Mass Market Paperback)

Stephen Crane does a superb job of displaying the qualities of Naturalism in this story. He focuses on the lower classes, deals with an amoral set of ideas/decisions, displays a blatant attack on false values, a reformest agenda, imagery that is either animalistic or mechanistic, and a plot of decline that often leads to catastrophe through a deterministic sequence of causes and effects. Crane attacks both the romantic idealism and the moral posturing of the church in this novel. The animalistic imagery, displayed in the Darwinian landscape of Rum Alley, is significant, for it reinforces the work's naturalistic orientation: humans are viewed as extensions of the animal kingdom engaged in a Darwinian struggle for survival. This novel assails the hypocricy of the priest who offers condemnation instead of compassion, who claims to help people, yet turns a deaf ear to their pleas for help, and whose moral posturing encourages others to do the same. BRAVO! Crane....If you would like to discuss this novel in greater detail, email me.