This edition reprints the first published version, that of 1893.

Misprints and errors have been corrected and are identified in A Note on the Text. Footnotes indicate changes in wording Crane made for the 1896 edition and explain slang expressions and customs of the day. Maps of the novel's New York City locales are also provided.

Backgrounds and Sources includes nonfictional accounts of urban life by Jacob Riis and others from which Crane drew, as well as discussions of Crane's literary sources

The Author and the Novel traces the history of the novel's composition and revision.

Contemporary American reviews of the 1893 Maggie and American and English reviews of the 1896 edition focus on the historical importance of the work, the values and tastes of the 1890s, and Crane's modernism.

The modern critical essays are by John Berryman, Charles Child Walcutt, William Bysshe Stein, Joseph X. Brennan, Janet Overmyer, Donald Pizer, Joseph Katz, Eric Solomon, Jay Martin, Donald B. Gibson, Arno Karlen, Katherine G. Simoneaux, Frank Bergon, Hershel Parker, Brian Higgins, and Thomas A. Gullason.