The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad Volume 4 1908-1911

by Joseph Conrad

Series:The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad (4)

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This is the fourth of eight volumes comprising all the surviving letters of Joseph Conrad. Conrad spent half the period of Volume Four writing Under Western Eyes and the other half recovering from the ensuing mental and physical breakdown. During the early months of 1908, the short story 'Razumov' began growing into a novel that embodied Conrad's appalled fascination with Russian politics, his misgivings about language, and his acute sense of loneliness. After the completion of the novel in show more 1910 and a vehement quarrel with J. B. Pinker, his agent, Conrad suffered a breakdown whose effects lingered for many months. By the spring of 1911, however, he was able to resume the long-delayed Chance. The tale of these years emerges vividly from the correspondence. Of special interest are frank critiques of John Galsworthy's work, manoeuvrings around the new and distinguished English Review, an indignant falling out with Ford Madox Ford, mercurial transactions with Pinker, enlightening accounts of writing in progress (The Secret Sharer and A Personal Record as well as the two novels), reactions to the tumultuous politics of the day, anecdotes about John and Borys Conrad, and evidence of new friendships with American and French writers, among them André Gide. show less

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Joseph Conrad

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Joseph Conrad is recognized as one of the 20th century's greatest English language novelists. He was born Jozef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857, in the Polish Ukraine. His father, a writer and translator, was from Polish nobility, but political activity against Russian oppression led to his exile. Conrad was orphaned at a young age show more and subsequently raised by his uncle. At 17 he went to sea, an experience that shaped the bleak view of human nature which he expressed in his fiction. In such works as Lord Jim (1900), Youth (1902), and Nostromo (1904), Conrad depicts individuals thrust by circumstances beyond their control into moral and emotional dilemmas. His novel Heart of Darkness (1902), perhaps his best known and most influential work, narrates a literal journey to the center of the African jungle. This novel inspired the acclaimed motion picture Apocalypse Now. After the publication of his first novel, Almayer's Folly (1895), Conrad gave up the sea. He produced thirteen novels, two volumes of memoirs, and twenty-eight short stories. He died on August 3, 1924, in England. (Bowker Author Biography) show less