The Black Riders

The author's first book of poetry. This book despite its small printing was quite widely reviewed, including by William Dean Howells in Harper's (who had been one of the earliest to recognize his talent in praising MAGGIE). Not all saw him as Howells did (he had compared Crane to Tolstoi). The New York Tribune (from which Crane was fired in 1892) took umbrage at his irregularity of form, Munsey's Magazine was the most succinct: "one of the newly heralded geniuses., one of the fads among a certain class". In fact it was a very radical and still under appreciated book: radical in line and form (Crane calls them "lines", not "poems", as if they were lines he had written for a newspaper).


Genre: Romance