ENG 463 Joseph Conrad

From WolfWikis

[1]

"Centuries may come and go before anyone so gifted, so strange, and such a charming human being as Joseph Conrad comes this way again." Murihead Bone

Class, Tradition, and Money

Conrad’s christening song sung to him by his father sets the tone for the financial problems that would plague the author for the rest of his life. Apollo Korzeniowski, a member of an ancient noble Polish family who lost all his lands and money in an 1830 rebellion, sang these depressing lines to his newborn son on December 3, 1857: "You are without land, without love, without country, without people, while Poland-your mother- is in her grave" (Fletcher, 7)In the Victorian era, aristocrats and landed gentry made up what Mitchell calls “a hereditary landowning class, whose income came from the rental of their property” (Mitchell, 22). Conrad’s father’s lament shows the truly destitute state of the family- with the loss of land came the loss of a family’s source of income.

Joseph Conrad struggled with managing money throughout his youth. A letter from his uncle,Conrad’s sole guardian after the death of his parents, written in February 1877, reveals Conrad’s financial ineptitude. His uncle writes that Conrad had “by the end of two years spent the money meant to last for three” (Fletcher, 20). His uncle also documents Conrad’s habit of “demanding more money with expensive telegrams” and records his “failure to protect his money from thieves and a habit of running up debts he couldn’t repay” (Fletcher, 20). In 1878, Conrad followed his dream of working at sea and joined the Mavis, a British ship headed to Constantinople and then on to Lowescroft, England (Fletcher, 24). Once in Lowescroft, Conrad deserted the Mavis, wasting his apprentice’s fee and angering his uncle who wrote, “I agreed that you should sail on an English ship but not to your staying in England and not to your traveling in London and wasting my money there!”(Fletcher, 24). It is possible that the stress from his financial problems, including gambling debts, led to Conrad’s suicide attempt in 1879. At the age of only twenty-one, Conrad fired a gun at his chest; the bullet narrowly missed his heart (Fletcher, 21). Conrad would survive the attempt but would continue to be in debt to one person or another for the rest of his life.

In his later years, Conrad relied heavily on grants from the Royal Literary Fund, an organization which provides financial relief for authors who have fallen on tough times (Fletcher, 84). It is notable that Conrad never applied for these grants himself. His fellow writers, including Henry James, Edmund Goss, J.M. Barrie, and H.G. Wells took him up as a cause, and wrote letters of their support to the RLF, securing Conrad grants of around 300 pounds each (Fletcher, 84-95).

This ship is likely very similar to the ship on which Conrad sailed from Constantinople to England in the 1870s. Pellegrin, Honore. 1848.Ship Portrait of the English Brigg Sarah Maria of Waterford, Rober Caddock Commander, entering Marseilles.[2]

The logo of the RLF[3]

Working Life

I don't like work... but I like what is in work -- the chance to find yourself. Your own reality -- for yourself, not for others -- which no other man can ever know.[[10]]

The manuscript from Heart of Darkness. One can make out the many revisions and corrections Conrad made. Most of his manuscripts are heavily revised like this page, showing his painstaking pursuit of excellence. (Karl, 393)

In Conrad's letters to friends and family members he presents two opposing views on writing. At times, Conrad portrays the creative process positively, presenting writing as being freeing and worthwhile. Conrad clearly appreciates writing more when it is spontaneous and organic instead of being motivated by publishers, deadlines, and financial necessity. Despite some positive remarks, Conrad's grumbles and complaints about work are numerous. In a letter to his close friend Richard Curle Conrad writes,

You have no idea what a terrible task I had in revising and putting into shape the enormous mass of typewritten pages which went to make up that Victory. I have been at it up to the 19th, almost without interruption. It was a damnable business. But it's over at last and the monstrous pile is gone to America(Curle, 24).

Perhaps it is Conrad's reluctance to write solely for income that causes many of the creative blocks he records in great detail. Instead of being able to write when inspiration struck, Conrad had to continue to produce novels in order to make ends meet. For the majority of his creative career, writing was his only source of income other than the R.L.F. grants previously mentioned. From his letters, one can get a true sense of his Conrad's deep frustration and exasperation.

Everything is there: descriptions, dialogue, reflexion- everything- everything but the belief, the conviction, the only thing needed to make me put pen to paper. I've thought out a volume in a day till I felt sick in mind and heart and gone to bed, completely done up, without having written a line. The effort I put out should give birth to masterpieces as big as mountains- and it brings forth a ridiculous mouse now and then (Karl, 430).

Science and the Urban World

A portrait of Charles Darwin[4]

"I fully suscribe to the judgments of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important." (Darwin, 97).

When Charles Darwin's book The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published in 1859 it became a bestseller (Mitchell, 84). Darwin argued, among many things, that plants and animals changed in response to their environment (Mitchell, 85). In many of Joseph Conrad's works, especially in his novel Heart of Darkness, Conrad presents a sort of reverse evolution, with men becoming more primitive and animalistic instead of more advanced. Conrad's characters in Heart of Darkness adapt to their environment in the Congo negatively, becoming more uncivilized and less human as their journey progresses. Joseph Conrad's own first-hand experiences in the Congo and the tales of other men's journeys that became part of popular culture at the time show the darkest, most animalistic side of humanity.

Conrad's personal Congo experience, as one critic puts it, "awoke in him a terrible insight into the folly and pathos of human behaviour and motivation" (Fletcher, 60). In a letter written about the experience later in his life, Conrad writes that he was greatly disappointed in his adventure to the Congo, saying that on the trip he only gained knowledge of "the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration. What an end to the idealised realities of a boy's daydreams!" (Fletcher, 56). As if the journey itself was not disillusioning enough, Conrad returned to London amidst the scandal over the behavior of James Silgo Jameson, a member of H.M. Stanley's expedition (Fletcher, 61). Jameson, a formerly respectable member of society, created outrage when he "apparently paid six handkerchiefs for the privilege of watching and sketching a young slave girl sacrificed and eaten by cannibals" (Fletcher, 61).

In Heart of Darkness Conrad delves deep into the nature of mankind, examining the relationship between European civilization, which many considered to be more evolutionarily "advanced" than that of the natives he encountered in the Congo, and African civilization, . Conrad describes how the natives "howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces" (Conrad). He goes on write that "what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar (Conrad). While quotations such as this led Chinua Achebe among others to criticize Conrad and label him a racist, his statements were advanced for his time. Conrad is acknowledging the "remote kinship" between the natives and the Europeans, equalizing the two groups. In this quote he focuses on the animalistic behavior of the natives in terms of their physical behavior, their "howl[ing] and leap[ing]" while in the Europeans he explores their greed and lack of conscience (Conrad). In both instances, he explores the beast which resides within all men.

Government and Law

Joseph Conrad was introduced to his future wife, Jessie George, in late 1894 by their mutual friend Hope (Fletcher, 72). Jessie, who was fifteen years Conrad's junior, was a typist, a skill that proved valuable to Conrad who suffered from arthritis (Fletcher, 72). Their relationship grew stronger as Jessie read Conrad's manuscripts, including the working copy of An Outcast of the Islands (Fletcher, 72). In early March 1896, Conrad proposed to Jessie in London's National Gallery (Fletcher, 72). On March 24, 1996, the couple was married in a Register Office with their friend Hope as the witness (Fletcher, 73).

A portrait of Jessie taken in 1896. The photograph is now housed in the Yale University Library. (Fletcher,73)

In a letter to a friend, Charles Zagorski, Conrad discusses his intent to marry Jessie. Conrad writes

...I am announcing...that I am getting married. Perhaps nobody is more astonished than I am. But I cannot say that I am terrified, being, as you know, accustomed to lead a life full of adventure, and to wrestle with terrible dangers. Besides I must add that my fiancee does not appear at all dangerous. Her Christian name is Jessie; her surname George. She is a little person who is very dear to me...Our marriage will take place on the 24th of this month and then we shall leave London immediately to hid from the purview of the world our happiness (or our absurdities) on the wilde and picturesque shores of Brittany, where I intend renting a little cottage in a fishing village..."(Jean-Aubry, 185).

Conrad's civil union would not have been possible in pre-1836 England. Before the Marriage Act was passed in 1836, a marriage was legal only if performed by a clergyman of the Church of England (Mitchell, 101). The Marriage Act secularized marriage, recognizing it as "a contract regulated by the state rather than the church" (Mitchell, 101). An option became available for those couples not wanting to be married in the Church of England. Like Conrad and Jessie did, "people could take out a civil license and be married by a register instead of a clergyman" (Mitchell, 102). The civil ceremony was still relatively rare, however; in 1844 "there were 120,000 marriages celebrated in the Church of England; 2,280 Roman Catholic ceremonies;" and "6,515 in other religious denominations; and 3,446 civil marriages" (Mitchell, 102).

House, Food and Clothes

A photograph of Capel House, now housed at Duke University (Fletcher, 98)

Joseph Conrad and his family moved frequently, living near the Thames River for a period of time (Fletcher, 75). Another of the family's moves was to Pent Farm in Kent, a place Conrad describes in a letter, writing

A road runs along the foot of the hills near the house- a very lonely and straight road, and along which (so it is whispered) old Lord Roxby- he died 80 years ago- rides at night in a four-in-hand driven by himself...On the other side of the little garden stretches out quiet and waste land intersected by hedges and here and there stands an oak or a group of young ash trees...The colouring of the country presents brown and pale yellow tints- an in between, in the distance on can see the meadows, as green as emeralds(Fletcher, 80).

The Conrads eventually settled at Capel House, a farmhouse with an orchard (Fletcher, 98). At Capel House, Conrad found the peace and solitude he so desperately desired after his complete mental breakdown in January of 1910 (Fletcher, 95-96). In a letter to William Rothenstein Conrad writes

We have found a home in the woods within 4 1/2 miles. It is picturesque and roomy. I must have space and silence-silence! I shall get that last there if anywhere outside the grave-which has no space" (Fletcher, 98).

Conrad's joy at finding a country home that provided the family with space and quiet is understandable given the nature of the typical middle-class Victorian home in the city. Due to the high price of land, houses in the city were several stories tall and very narrow (Mitchell, 109). Homes located on a square rather than the street were more desirable, probably because of the noise from passerby and traffic on the streets (Mitchell, 109).

Family and Social Rituals

A photo of Borys with Joseph Conrad and Edmund Oliver taken in 1911. The photo shows Borys right before he joined the H.M.S. Worcester, following in his father's sea-faring footsteps (Karl, 725).

Joseph Conrad had two boys with his wife Jessie; Alfred Borys Konrad Korzeniowski, who was born on January 17, 1898, and John Alexander Conrad, who was born on August 2, 1906 (Fletcher,78,93). Conrad seems to have been greatly pleased by his first son, who he called Borys, as his letters to his aunt Aniela Zagorska demonstrate (Fletcher, 78). Conrad writes

The doctor reports that it is a magnificent boy. He has dark hair, enormous eyes and looks like a monkey. What upsets me is that my wife maintains that he is also very much like me.

John Alexander's birth seems to have been outshadowed somewhat by the illness and financial troubles that plagued the family at the time of his birth. In a letter to the Polish historian Kazimierz Waliszewski written in 1904, Conrad writes

For a month now we have been involved in all sorts of unpleasantness. My poor wife fell and dislocated her knee. An so doctor, surgeon and masseur came into the picture. On top of this my bank failed and I found myself without bank, without money, without even a cheque book- an excruciating experience which still makes me shudder when I think of it (Fletcher, 86).

Nevertheless, Conrad is still joyous when describing John Alexander's birth. Conrad writes in a letter to a friend in August 1906 that Borys

has already made a fair division of his toys and has also given him half of his dog- which is a proof of affection, I assure you (Fletcher, 93).

While many people imagine Victorians as having very large families with many children, Conrad's smaller family size was not abnormal by the end of the Victorian period, particularly among the middle class (Mitchell, 142). In the middle of the Victorian era, the average family had six children (Mitchell, 142). Only about twenty percent of the population had more than ten children (Mitchell, 142). Larger families were generally only found in the upper middle and upper classes since poor nutrition often led to infant deaths among the working classes (Mitchell, 142). By the turn of the century, families were much smaller (Mitchell, 143). The middle class couples began to limit the number of children they had in part due to the expense of educating all the children to the level society demanded (Mitchell, 143). Due to Conrad's financial difficulties and age when he married Jessie, it is likely that the couple considered the costs of education and other general expenses when deciding to have children.

Education

Conrad's father established education as a priority early in Conrad's childhood (Fletcher, 11). In 1865, Ewa, Conrad's mother, died of tuberculosis (Fletcher, 11). The family, already financially ruined due to Apollo's imprisonment for his radical political beliefs, found itself racked with sorrow (Fletcher, 11). Determined to make a better life for his son and to try to keep young Joseph's mind off of the family's struggles, Apollo decided to occupy Joseph with studies (Fletcher, 11). Apollo went to great lengths to provide opportunities for his son, even selling a desk which had been a favorite of Ewa's and held great sentimental value in order to pay for textbooks for Joseph (Fletcher, 11).

A picture of Victor Hugo, whose works Conrad read as a youth. [5]

Apollo worked as a translator to provide for the remainder of his family (Fletcher, 11). Young Conrad read his father's translations of works such as Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona and Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea (Fletcher, 11). Apollo did not want Joseph to attend the local school and Joseph's education continued at home until his father died in May of 1869 (Fletcher, 12-13). After his father's death, his grandmother found Joseph a medical student named Adam Pulman who tutored him at home for the next several years (Fletcher, 14). Conrad's individual schooling and the accompanying lack of discipline caused him some problems when he had to attend regular school after his father died (Fletcher, 15). In a letter, a relative notes that Conrad was

Intellectually well developed but hated the rigours of school, which tired and bored him; he used to say that he had a great talent and would become a great writer. This, coupled with a sarcastic smile on his face and frequent critical remarks on everything, provoked surprise in his teachers and ridicule among his colleagues (Fletcher, 15).

Conrad's education fits the pattern of many Victorians. Mitchell writes that "Children in Victorian England were educated in many different ways- or not at all- depending on their sex and their parents' financial circumstances, social class, religion and values" (Mitchell, 165). While in the United States during the Victorian period there was some consensus about cirriculum and school funding, in England "disputes about religious instruction and a conviction that every father had the right to determine how to raise his own children delayed the development of compulsory schooling" (Mitchell, 165).

Health and Medicine

A set of surgeon's instruments from the nineteenth century. These instruments are probably very similar to those used in Jessie's knee surgery.[6]

In the late 1920s, Jessie and Joseph's health restricted their lives greatly. In several letters to his good friend Richard Curle, Conrad describes their ailing health. In one letter Conrad asks Curle to bring him "a couple of books-not novels" as he has "a severe cold and sub-acute bronchitis which left me like a rag" (Curle, 189). In another letter to Curle, written in July of 1924, Conrad writes that he is "slightly gouty in one hand and the corresponding foot" (Curle, 191). Conrad's wife Jessie suffered from a leg injury caused by a fall which required several operations (Fletcher, 86). Conrad describes one of her operations in a letter to Curle.

My Dear Curle,

Jessie was operated on Saturday last at home under local anesthetic. A 4 inch cut down to the bone and involving a nerve. She had a most awful time of it with pain all Sunday and Monday. She is a little easier now. The worst of it is that all the trouble has not been removed. There is another inflamed region which will have to be treated- probably by an operation of a more serious nature. But not yet. Sir R. Jones will come again, I suppose next week.

There being a Nurse in the house I must ask you to come only on Saturday evening instead of Friday- unless untoward developments take place; in which case I shall wire you to Coleherne Court on Friday or Saturday morning to stop you. But that is not likely.

I don't feel very bright, as you may imagine. Jessie sends her love.

Always yours, J. Conrad (Curle, 78)

Holidays, Sports, and Recreation

A cartoon of a scene from Charles Dickens's novel Oliver Twist, a popular novel that was serialized during the Victorian period. Oliver Twist is an example of a novel that families might have read out loud together for entertainment.[7]

In the Victorian era, reading was not only a individual activity but "a communal activity shared with family and friends" (Mitchell, 233). Reading became a form of entertainment for the masses during the Victorian period due to new "high-speed presses, cheap wood-pulp paper, machines for typesetting, new means of reproducing illustrations, railways to send printed material quickly all over the country, and the steadily growing number of people who were literate enough to read for pleasure" (Mitchell, 233). In order to make more of a profit off of books and magazines, novelists and their publishers began to serialize works (Mitchell, 234). Charles Dickens, one of a plethora of authors popular during the time period, published many of his most famous works including David Copperfield and Oliver Twist serially (Mitchell, 234).

Instead of embracing serialization like many of his contemporaries, Conrad seemed to dislike this method of publication, even though he had to resort to it in his later years to keep the family afloat financially. In a letter to H.G. Wells, Conrad writes

I've started a series of sea sketches and have sent out Pinker on the hunt to place them. This must save me. I've discovered that I can dictate that sort of bosh without effort at the rate of 3000 words in four hours. Fact! The only thing now is to sell it to a paper and make a book of the rubbish. Hang! (Fletcher, 87).

Religion and Reform

I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace. Under Western Eyes, pt. 1, prologue In Under Western Eyes, the protagonist Kryilo Sidorovitch Razumov attempts to find truth and fulfillment by dedicating himself to a radical form of patriotism. In place of personal relationships, he ascribes to an ideology where Russia, his beloved country, becomes holy. While the majority of Victorians did not develop beliefs as extreme or leftist as Razumov, people began to question previously accepted religious norms in the Victorian period. While the majority of people look back on Victorians as being religious,Sally Mitchell writes, "nineteenth century religious life was more likely to be filled with energy, turmoil, and struggles against doubt" (Mitchell, 239).

A drawing of St.John's, a Church of England cathedral. Published in Canadian Illustrated News, April 1, 1871. From Charles de Volpi, Newfoundland: a Pictorial Record. [8]

About fourty-seven percent of England's population belonged to the Church of England, also known as the Anglican Church, which was the established church (Mitchell, 239, 241). While today many in American stress the separation of church and state, in England during the time period Queen Victoria was not only the country's sovereign but also the head of its church (Mitchell, 239). Within the Church of England, there were three factions that had "differing approaches to theological and social questions" (Mitchell, 242). One group, known as evangelicals, "stressed personal piety, conversion, individual Bible reading, and the serious Christian life" (Mitchell, 242). The second group "emphasized tradition, the sacraments, and priestly authority" and was known as the "high church" faction (Mitchell, 242-243). The third group was known as "tractarians" were "fairly liberal, committed to social reform, and interested in intellectual and scientific inquiry" (Mitchell, 243).

Not all Protestants were members of the established church, however; there were also Protestants known as Dissenters, or Nonconformists (Mitchell, 239). The Dissenters were "primarily Methodists, Baptists, Prebyterians, Congregationalists, Unitarians, and Quakers" (Mitchell, 239). The Dissenters set themselves apart from other Protestants because "they did not assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith that formalized England's separation from the Church of Rome in 1562" (Mitchell, 239). While the name "Nonconformist" or "Dissenter" implies that these Protestants were a small minority in England, nothing can be further from the truth. In a national count in March of 1851, fourty-nine percent of England's population described themselves as being Nonconformists (Mitchell, 241).

By the end of the Victorian period, church attendance had shrunk dramatically (Mitchell, 241). According to Mitchell, "in London in 1902, only 20 percent of the population went regularly to services" (Mitchell, 241). This number signifies a huge drop in church attendance from 1851, when a national count reported that "60 percent of the people who were physically able to do so attended church services" (Mitchell, 239). Perhaps, like Conrad's Razumov, England's population had found something else to fill the hole in their lives previously plugged by religion by the end of the Victorian period.

Victorian Morality

A photo of ivory traders, now owned by the British Library. (Fletcher, 60).

The moral environment of Victorian England is a complex subject. The Victorians “believed in progress, and they believed people could change their lives and rise in the world through self-help"(Mitchell, 259-260). This idea was one of the values associated with evangelical religion (Mitchell, 261). These values "helped promote the growth of business and the advance of middle-class men (Mitchell, 261). While "hard work, frugality, and self-denial were apt to bring economic rewards, most evangelicals believed it was wrong for a man to devote his life to work simply because he wanted to get rich. Hard work was seen as a moral good in itself; if wealth followed, it was a fitting recognition of the man's virtue." (Mitchell, 261).

These values seemingly contradict the idea of the English Empire and imperialism in general. After all, as Mitchell writes, "the British Empire arose more through commerce than through planned conquest" (Mitchell, 282). The Victorians, as discussed in a later section, did not see imperialism as being motivated by economic gains, however, and thought of imperialism as being a sort of missionary activity whereby the civilized and superior Europeans brought "civilization to 'savages' who welcomed the blessings of peace, security, and justice" (Mitchell, 276). Conrad had a different point of view on the subject. In Heart of Darkness when Marlow's motives for traveling the Congo are questioned, he replies "To make money, of course, what do you think?" (Watt, 90). Conrad comments more directly on the relationship between greed and imperialism, writing in an essay entitled Geography and Some Explorers writing that "he picked up on the Congo 'the distasteful knowledge of the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration" (Watt, 90).

Conrad links greed and imperialism, exposing a contradiction which existed in Victorian morality, which maintained that imperialism was positive while condeming the pursuit of wealth for wealth's sake.

England and Empire

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it. The Heart of Darkness, ch. 1

The middle and late Victorian periods make up part of what is often referred to as the Age of Empire (Mitchell, 274). In fact, the word "imperialism" itself was coined in the 1870s to describes the phenomenon that was taking place around the globe in which the major economically and militarily well-developed countries were "carv[ing] the rests of the world into colonial territories" (Mitchell, 274). Among the imperialist nations were France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United States, and, of course, Great Britain (Mitchell, 274). Amazingly, by 1897 Great Britain's empire contained twenty-five percent of the world's population (Mitchell, 274).

It was in this environment that Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness, a novel that is seemingly anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist. In fact, at the time of its publication in 1899, many thought that the novel was "a major attack on the horrors perpetrated in the Belgian Congo by Leopold, the King of the Belgians, and his agents" (Watt, 85). Some critics, including Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian novelist, had other ideas (Watt, 85). In 1975, Achebe attacked Conrad, saying that "Conrad had used Africa as a historyless and barbaric opposite to European civilization, and that his treatment of the Congolese people was offensively stereotyped and unsympathetic" (Watt, 85).

A photo of Achebe, one of Conrad's more vocal critics. [9]

Watt makes an impressive counterargument to Achebe’s claims. Watt writes

"There is certainly good reason to believe that Marlow, and Heart of Darkness as a whole, imply that the blacks are savages who are incapable of using or understanding Western knowledge or technology. There is also relatively little effort to show the Africans as people. Still both Marlow and Conrad show a real readiness to see that their way of life has real meaning and value; and if we judge comparatively, we must surely make them superior as human beings to their white masters. This is, indeed, the major aim of the story as a whole- Marlow’s sickened disgust with the colonizers in Africa and then with Kurtz" (Watt, 89).

While Conrad's novel can in fact be interpreted to have some racist undertones, these subleties are merely the products of the time in which Conrad lived and wrote. Imperialism was the accepted norm. As Mitchell writes, "Queen Victoria expressed a widely shared attitude when she said that England's duty was 'to protect the poor natives and advance civilization' (Mitchell, 276). Given the attitudes of the time period, Conrad's Heart of Darkness has to be interpreted as anti-colonial and anti-imperialist; it is, as one critic writes, "an examination of the West itself and not...a comment on Africa" (Watt, 88).

References

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness.http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/219.

Conrad, Joseph. Under Western Eyes.http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2480.

Curle, Richard, ed. Conrad to a Friend: Letters from Joseph Conrad to Richard Curle. New York: Russell and Russell, 1928.

Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man.http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2300.

Fletcher, Chris. Joseph Conrad. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Jean-Aubry, G. Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters, Volume 1. London: William Heinemann, Ltd., 1927.

Karl, Frederick R. Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1979.

Watt, Ian. Essays on Conrad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Information on the photographs that are currently on the Internet can be found by clicking on the link within the frame of each photo. The photos are in their original context on the linked pages.