Stephen Crane's Revision of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

Abstract

N A LETTER to Ripley Hitchcock of Appleton and Company, pubIlishers of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, Crane wrote on February 2, I896: am very glad to hear you speak as you do concerning I will set to work this month rewriting it. The next Crane-Hitchcock letter concerning Maggie, letter which is undated and incomplete, supplies further evidence that Crane reworked the I893 text: am working at She will be down to you in few days. I have dispensed with goodly number of damns.' What is singularly interesting about this correspondence is that it brings to light the existence of variant texts of The question it raised for me was whether or not Crane dispensed with something more than merely a goodly number of damns. What revisions did Crane make? It might turn out that they were significant enough to justify and reward collation of the two texts. On February I5 Crane sent Hitchcock note: sent you under two covers six chapters of Maggie to see if they suit. The remainder will shortly follow. The previous week, in letter dated simply Monday (February io), Crane wrote Hitchcock that he would send him Maggie detail. I have carefully plugged at the words which hurt. Seems to me the book wears quite new aspect from very slight omissions. Next, from Washington, D. C., he inquired about the edited Maggie. And on March 23, still in Washington, D. C., he wrote: will begin to drive Maggie forward. Is The Red Badge going yet? Greeley by the way told 1The Crane-Hitchcock letters dealing with Maggie are here quoted by permission of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection in the New York Public Library. I am especially indebted to Mr. John D. Gordon, Curator of the Berg Collection, for his kind assistance. I have been granted furthermore permission to edit the full set of Crane's letters to Hitchcock, which I am preparing for publication in the Builletin of the New York Public Library.