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Best known as the author of
Heart of Darkness (1899), Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is one of the most widely taught writers in English. His mastery of the English language is especially notable, for he was born in a Ukrainian area of Poland under Czarist Russian rule and began a sea career in France. He joined the British merchant fleet, and his travels took him to European imperial outposts throughout Asia, South America, and Africa. To pass the monotonous time on land between journeys, he began to write fiction in English. Never quite at home anywhere, he spoke a thickly accented mix of English, Polish, and French. He sometimes posed as a flirtatious Frenchman, a fallen Polish nobleman, and an English country squire and man of letters. Like many writers, his works reflect his experiences. Interest in his writings has become especially strong, in light of their relationship to marginality and postcolonialism.
As a reference book, this volume is a comprehensive guide to Conrad's troubled life and enduring literary legacy. An opening biographical chapter tells the story of his difficulties, adventures, and achievements. It also summarizes the current state of biographical research on Conrad and provides a useful context for approaching his works. The chapter that follows builds on the biography by discussing the importance of Conrad's letters to our understanding of his life and writings. Additional chapters examine each of his major works, while others address clusters of his later novels, his short fiction, and his essays and memoirs. Each chapter is written by an expert contributor and offers a combination of summary and original scholarship. Thus the volume provides important biographical, bibliographical, and contextual information to those readers new to Conrad, while it simultaneously gives experienced readers a wealth of fresh critical perspectives.
List of contents
Preface
Chronology
Biography by Leonard Orr
Letters by Frederick R. Karl
Almayer's Folly (1895) and An Outcast of the Islands (1896) by Leonard Orr
The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (1897) by Brian W. Shaffer
Heart of Darkness (1899) by Ted Billy
Lord Jim (1900) by Leonard Orr
Youth (1902) and Typhoon (1903) by Susan Staker
Nostromo (1904) by John X. Cooper
The Secret Agent (1907) by Stephen Arata
Under Western Eyes (1911) by Paul Hollywood
Victory (1916) and The Shadow-Line (1916) by Debra Romanick
The Later Novels: Chance (1913), The Arrow of Gold (1919), The Rescue (1920), The Rover (1923), and Suspense (1925) by Allan Simmons
The Short Fiction: Tales of Unrest (1898), A Set of Six (1908), Twixt Land and Sea (1925), Within the Tides (1915), and Tales of Hearsay (1925) by Ted Billy
Essays and Memoirs: The Mirror of the Sea (1906), A Personal Record (1912), Notes on Life and Letters (1921), and Last Essays (1926) by Ray Stevens
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the author
LEONARD ORR is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Semiotic and Structuralist Analyses of Fiction and Problems and Poetics of the Nonaristotelian Novel, and he has edited Yeats and Postmodernism and De-Structing the Novel: Essays in Applied Postmodern Hermeneutics. Orr is currently completing A Dictionary of Critical Theory and A Handbook of Critical Theory, both to be published by Greenwood Press, and he is editing Critical Essays on Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He has written numerous articles published in Modern Fiction Studies, The Journal of Narrative Technique, SubStance, Neophilologus, College English, and other journals.
