Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

About this book

Maggie Johnson grows up in the Bowery, the poorest slum of New York, with a drunken, violent mother, a father who soon dies, and a brother, Jimmie, who becomes a tough truck driver. Despite everything, 'the girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle'. She works in a collar factory and falls for Jimmie's flashy friend Pete, a bartender, who seems to promise a better world, and when he abandons her, her family and neighbours turn on her.

Context and significance

Stephen Crane was only twenty-one when he had this short novel printed at his own expense in 1893, under the pen name Johnston Smith, because publishers thought it too shocking. It sold almost no copies at first, but it is now seen as a pioneering work of American realism. Read Crane's The Red Badge of Courage.

About the author