Cora Crane - Life With Stephen Crane

Life With Stephen Crane

Writer and journalist Stephen Crane went to Jacksonville en route to Cuba to cover the Spanish-American War. He stayed in the St. James Hotel. He was already famous for his book The Red Badge of Courage, a Civil War novel. Cora, whose legal name was Lady Stewart, met Crane in 1896, and soon became his lover. She later called herself Cora Crane, despite the fact that the couple was never legally married. They maintained a tumultuous relationship until his death.

Cora Crane became known as the first female war correspondent when she traveled with Stephen to Greece to cover the Greco-Turkish War for the New York press. Her pen name was Imogene Carter. After the war, the Cranes settled in England, socialized with the literary elite and joined the Fabian Society. While there, they camouflaged their limited finances while entertaining lavishly. They leased Ravensbrook, a villa in Oxted, where Cora was a celebrity due to her status as Lady Stewart and her actions in a scandal involving the wife and mistress of Harold Frederic. When Frederic died, his legal wife had his mistress, Kate, jailed for manslaughter because Kate, a Christian Scientist, had summoned a faith healer to pray for the dying man. Entangled in the squabble were the potential royalties from Frederic's posthumous bestseller, The Market Place. Pillars of Victorian morality, among them prominent publishers' wives, rallied behind the legal wife, raising funds for her children in newspaper campaigns. Cora Crane took the illegitimate children to Brede Place while their mother was in jail, and she ran a parallel campaign to raise funds for them. This prompted Joseph Conrad to call Cora "the only Christian in sight."

While visiting Badenweiler, Germany, a health spa on the edge of the Black Forest, Stephen Crane died of tuberculosis at the age of 28. In his will he left everything to Cora. He is buried in his home state of New Jersey.