Maggie, a Girl of the Streets

Originally published privately, under the name Johnston Smith, MAGGIE was written when Stephen Crane was 21 years old. It concerns Maggie Johnson, a Lower East Side tenement girl, who is treated brutally as a child by her alcoholic mother. She eventually escapes to her brother's friend Pete, who seduces her. Because she has dishonored herself, the family disowns her; when Pete leaves her, Maggie becomes a prostitute. Crane intended, in this novel, "to show that environment is a tremendous thing in the world and frequently shapes lives regardless."