CORA CRANE

This full-length biography of the wife of novelist Stephen Crane is a praise-worthy effort to penetrate the clouds of scandal and doubt enveloping the career of the beautiful Cora and heretofore keeping her from taking her rightful place beside her famous husband. No mere tracing of family trees, this is a lovingly-fashioned attempt to present the lady as deserving of admiration (although perhaps not of emulation under present-day conventions). If history has been unkind to Cora Crane, Miss Gilkes has been not only kind, but careful: her documentation is the fruit of sincere researches into a wealth of material to which she alone has evidently had special access. Even day-to-day trivialities are redeemed from dullness by the insouciant approach of Miss Gilkes' observations. The excitement, romance, and something of the courage of the period combine convincingly to portray Cora Crane as a resourceful, daring woman. A proper by-product is, of course, the new light this work sheds on Stephen Crane himself.