Here is the first biography of the enigmatic Cora, a fiery, unconventional, devil-may-care woman, so far in advance of her time that she was never able to make a practical use of her talents, except for the one that put her beyond the pale.No one knows exactly how she gravitated from a respectable Boston background to ownership of the smartest brothel in Jacksonville, Florida, where she met Stephen Crane (famous as the author of The Red Badge of Courage ), and nursed him back to health after he had been shipwrecked.As Mrs. Stephen Crane she was hostess to a distinguished literary circle during the last three years of Crane's life. Cora Crane, as a whole, deals frankly with the 'underground history' of bohemian artistic life at the end of the last century, both in the United States and England, and the subject is a fascinating one. This biography describes the Cranes' life at Brede Place, Sussex, where they settled as a married couple, and where the ghosts of their passion - and of Stephen Crane's morbid jealousy and social embarrassment - harried and destroyed them. They surrounded themselves with people. They gave fantastic parties that a Scott Fitzgerald might have envied. And they were bankrupt.This account of her life is based on a wealth of new source material and tells the coherent and absorbing story of a remarkable woman.