The Red Badge of Courage - Reception

Reception

The Red Badge of Courage received generally positive reviews from critics on its initial publication; in particular it was said to be a remarkably modern and original work. Appleton's 1895 publication went through ten editions in the first year alone, making Crane an overnight success at the age of twenty-four. H. G. Wells, a friend of the author, later wrote that the novel was greeted by an "orgy of praise" in England and the United States. An anonymous reviewer for The New York Press wrote shortly after the novel's initial publication that "One should be forever slow in charging an author with genius, but it must be confessed that The Red Badge of Courage is open to the suspicion of having greater power and originality that can be girdled by the name of talent." The reviewer for The New York Times was impressed by Crane's realistic portrayal of war, writing that the book "strikes the reader as a statement of facts by a veteran", a sentiment that was echoed by the reviewer for The Critic, who called the novel "a true book; true to life, whether it be taken as a literal transcript of a soldier's experiences in his first battle, or... a great parable of the inner battle which every man must fight."

The novel, however, did have its initial detractors. Some critics found Crane's young age and inexperience troubling, rather than impressive. For example, one reviewer wrote, "As Mr. Crane is too young a man to write from experience, the frightful details of his book must be the outcome of a very feverish imagination." Crane and his work also received criticism from veterans of the war; one in particular, Alexander C. McClurg—a brigadier general who served through the Chickamauga and Chattanooga campaigns—wrote a lengthy letter to The Dial (which his publishing company owned) in April 1896, lambasting the novel as "a vicious satire upon American soldiers and American armies." Author and veteran Ambrose Bierce, popular for his Civil War-fiction, also expressed contempt for the novel and its writer. When a reviewer for The New York Journal referred to The Red Badge of Courage as a poor imitation of Bierce's work, Bierce responded by congratulating them for exposing "the Crane freak". Some reviewers also found fault with Crane's narrative style, grammar mistakes, and apparent lack of traditional plot.

While it eventually became a bestseller in the United States, The Red Badge of Courage was more popular and sold more rapidly in England when it was published in late 1895. Crane was delighted with his novel's success overseas, writing to a friend: "I have only one pride and that is that the English edition of The Red Badge of Courage has been recieved with great praise by the English reviewers. I am proud of this simply because the remoter people would seem more just and harder to win." Critic, veteran and Member of Parliament George Wyndham called the novel a "masterpiece", applauding Crane's ability to "stage the drama of man, so to speak, within the mind of one man, and then admits you as to a theatre." Harold Frederic wrote in his own review that "If there were in existence any books of a similar character, one could start confidently by saying that it was the best of its kind. But it has no fellows. It is a book outside of all classification. So unlike anything else is it that the temptation rises to deny that it is a book at all". Frederic, who would later befriend Crane when the latter relocated to England in 1897, juxtaposed the novel's treatment of war to those by Leo Tolstoy, Émile Zola and Victor Hugo, all of whose works he believed to be "positively... cold and ineffectual" when compared to The Red Badge of Courage.