Helen Chambers, Conrad's Reading: Space, Time, Networks, Palgrave Macmillan 2018
The first study to make comprehensive, systematic and critical use of the rich seams of recorded evidence of reading to be found in Conrad’s Collected Letters
Offers an innovative examination of Conrad’s maritime reading, using an original multidimensional investigative approach
Offers the first comprehensive account of Conrad’s rich and varied fictional depictions of readers and reading, through close analysis of the ‘Marlow’ fiction, ‘Youth’ (1898) ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1899), Lord Jim (1900) and Chance (1914), and several other works
The first examination of Conrad’s most important longstanding male literary friendships seen through the perspective of shared reading of work in progress, periodicals and published books
Adds significantly to the study of Conrad and gender by further examining Conrad’s literary relationships with several literate and multilingual women
(From the publisher)
Mark D. Larabee, Ed. The Historian's Heart of Darkness: Reading Conrad's Masterpiece as Social and Cultural History
Featuring the texts of both Heart of Darkness and Conrad's autobiographical "Congo Diary" along with more than 200 annotations, this book enables readers to appreciate the connections between Conrad's writing and its historical context. Introductory essays explain Conrad's unique position as a chronicler of history, provide critical background information on how Europeans partitioned Africa and created the Congo Free State, and describe how the ivory and rubber trades brutalized the natives. Readers will learn how Conrad contributed to European awareness of the atrocities committed, and they will discover how the story's literary qualities form an essential part of its historical meaning. The numerous illustrations and maps depicting the historical Congo Free State provide a visual element to the story of Heart of Darkness a fictionalized tale that can be interpreted as history and that can help us interpret today's postcolonial, globalized world.
From the publisher.
Allan H. Simmons (ed.), The Nigger of the Narcissus; Cambridge Edition of the Works of Joseph Conrad.
Charting a homeward-bound voyage from Bombay to London aboard a sailing ship, The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (1897) captured the late-Victorian era's maritime obsession and identified the strikingly original talent of Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) as a sea writer in what has proved to be a landmark of sea literature. The Introduction situates the novel in Conrad's career and traces its origins and reception. Explanatory notes illuminate literary and historical references, identify real-life places and indicate Conrad's sources and influences. The essay on the text and the apparatus lay out the history of the work's composition and publication, and detail interventions by Conrad's typists, compositors and editors. Also included are notes explaining literary and historical references, a glossary of nautical terms, illustrations, including maps and pictures of early drafts, and appendixes. This edition of The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' presents the novel and its preface in forms more authoritative than any so far printed, and restores a text that has circulated in defective forms since its original publication.
From the publisher.
