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Originally published in 1924, Stephen Crane: A Study in...)
Originally published in 1924, Stephen Crane: A Study in American Letters was, until the early 21st century, the single most influential source on one of the most significant nineteenth-century American authors and poets: Stephen Crane.
A prolific writer who wrote notable works in the Realist tradition, as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism, Crane is widely recognised as one of his generation's most innovative writers. His Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, won him international acclaim in 1895, and remains a classic of American Literature.
Composed by Thomas Beer, this biography documents the trials and tribulations of Crane’s life, from being fired from various journalistic positions with newspapers and periodicals, to the publication of the acclaimed novella Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, and his subsequent rise to eminence. It also boasts an intimate and heartfelt introduction penned by Crane’s close personal friend, Joseph Conrad, which contributed the volume’s continued success.
Beer gathered his biographical information from a vast array of sources, including the correspondence of many of Crane’s friends - like John Northern Hilliard, Corwin Knapp Linson, Frederick Gordon, and Frederic Lawrence – and quotes an impressive sixty significant letters written by Crane himself.
Thomas Beer (1889 – 1940) was an American biographer, novelist, essayist, satirist, and author of short fiction. Born in Iowa, Beer graduated from Yale University in 1911 and studied law at Columbia University. He also served during World War I. Beer was best known for his biographies of Stephen Crane and Mark Hanna, as well as his study of American manners.
(A biography of US Senator Mark Hanna, from Ohio. Author's...)
A biography of US Senator Mark Hanna, from Ohio. Author's inscription on title page, signed and dated Nov. 12th, 1929. A very good hardcover copy. Light wear and smudging to spine label. Tight binding. Clean, unmarked pages. NOT ex-library. 325pg. Shipped Weight: Under 1 kilogram. Category: Political Science; Inscribed By Author. Inventory No: 020279.
Thomas Beer was an American biographer, novelist, and author of short fiction.
Background
Thomas Beer was born on November 22, 1889, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the first son and second of the three children of William Collins and Martha Ann Alice (Baldwin) Beer. He was named for his paternal grandfather, a lawyer and for many years a state judge in Ohio. The elder Thomas Beer, like his wife, Tabitha Dinsmore, was of Scottish and Scotch-Irish descent, their families having moved to Ohio from Pennsylvania early in the nineteenth century. Beer's grandfather on his mother's side, Linus Caleb Baldwin, who was of English descent, held ranch lands in Wyoming and elsewhere in the West but lived in Council Bluffs; he married Alice Boyle, a Presbyterian of Scottish and English stock. Beer's father studied law with a relative in Council Bluffs and joined the National Surety Company, for which he traveled widely in the W. While his three children were still very young, however, he was transferred to New York City, and the family moved to Yonkers, New York.
Education
Thomas, bookish and precocious, learned to read long before he started to school. After attending public grammar school, he went to the Mackenzie School at Dobbs Ferry, New York, where he wrote stories for the school magazine. He was graduated in 1911 from Yale (where he was a friend of the writer Waldo Frank) and entered the law school of Columbia University. Though he spent three years there and then worked for two years in his father's law office, he found the law uncongenial and abandoned it for writing.
Career
Beer's first published story, "The Brothers" (called "The Doughnuts" in an original longer form), was printed in the Century magazine in 1917. Not long after its appearance he enlisted as a private in the army field artillery; in 1918 he went to France as first lieutenant on the staff of the 87th Division. On his return he devoted himself to writing, and it was in the years from 1921 to 1930 that the bulk of his work was done. His first novel, The Fair Rewards (1922), dealt with the New York stage and the conflict between the hero's artistic aspirations and the commercial necessities of the theatre. Next came a biography of Stephen Crane (1923), warmly praised by the critics and still highly regarded. Sandoval (1924), called by Ernest Boyd the best American novel of the season, dealt with New York in 1870.
The Mauve Decade: American Life at the End of the Nineteenth Century (1926) ridiculed some of the great figures of the time yet looked back nostalgically. The style - oblique, witty, and condescending - has been described as too clever for its own good; certainly after thirty years it seemed sadly dated, although in its day The Mauve Decade was a best-seller. The Road to Heaven (1928), a novel that disappointed Beer's admirers, was followed by Hanna (1929), a study in the style of The Mauve Decade of Mark Hanna, Republican boss of the 1890's. Beer derived some of his material from his father, who had known Hanna, and the book was on the whole sympathetic.
While he was working on sophisticated books that appealed to a limited public, Beer was also writing scores of short stories for the popular magazines, stories which he belittled, and with reason. During his lifetime he allowed only one collection of his stories to be published, Mrs. Egg and Other Barbarians (1933); and yet it is possible that his stories may last longer than his novels, proving that in one case, at least, the common man, impatiently awaiting another Beer story in his five-cent magazine, was a better critic than the bright set in which Beer himself moved. During his last years he suffered from mental and physical ill health and was unable to write. He died of a heart attack at the age of fifty in a New York City hotel, leaving an abandoned novel, The Country of the Young, a tale of family life during the Spanish-American War. A second collection of short stories, Mrs. Egg and Other Americans (1947), was published posthumously. He was buried in the family plot in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Tarrytown, New York.
(B000OM7J76
Title: Mrs. Egg and Other Americans; Collected...)
Personality
Of a thoroughly urban type, Thomas Beer loved good conversation in pleasant company. But he was not only a brilliant and inspired talker; he was also an attentive listener, and it was to this second gift that he owed the material for his tales. His listening career began in Council Bluffs, where his grandmother told him countless stories, and continued throughout his life. He listened to strangers on trains and buses, in stores and restaurants, and held in his remarkable memory incidents that grew into tales of farm and country life, set in imaginary towns such as Zerbetta, Ohio, and Converis, New York.
Quotes from others about the person
Lewis Mumford described his appearance as bulky, almost clumsy, yet somehow delicate. "No one could forget the dancing mockery of his narrow eyes, when he unveiled them; his quick wince of affected agony, or the fixed stare of incredulousness with which he greeted a stupidity or a vulgarity. "