The History of Northeast Florida

  Cora Crane (born Cora Ethel Eaton Howorth) remains one of the most fascinating, unconventional, and frequently misunderstood figures in Northeast Florida history and in late 19th century literature. While history often relegates her to the role of "the author's wife," Cora was a formidable force of nature.  She was a businesswoman, a war correspondent, and a woman who defied every Victorian social norm to forge a life of her own making. Her relationship with Stephen Crane, the brilliant but self destructive author of The Red Badge of Courage , was a union of two outcasts who found in each other a shared spirit of rebellion and a tragic, fleeting stability. Stephen Crane Born in Boston on July 12, 1868, Cora Ethel Eaton Howorth came from a family with a respectable lineage. However, her temperament was fundamentally at odds with New England restraint. Her early life was defined by a series of escapes. Her first marriage, at age 18, to Thomas Murphy, lasted barely a year....