The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad

This penultimate volume of Conrad’s collected letters ends soon after his 65th birthday. Over the previous three years, Conrad wrote The Rover, struggled with Suspense, translated The Book of Job (a Polish comedy), collaborated with J. B. Pinker on a cinematic treatment of ‘Gaspar Ruiz’, and worked by himself on adapting The Secret Agent for the London stage. He saw the publication of The Rescue, Notes on Life and Letters, and the Doubleday/Heinemann collected edition, most of whose volumes had new Author’s Notes. Especially in North America, the collected edition strengthened his reputation as the leading English-language novelist of his day. This recognition could not always console him for his worries about his health, his family, and the state of post-war Europe, but he had not lost his sense of irony. These letters, the majority new to scholarship, abound in striking turns of phrase and unexpected insights.