Conrad as Provocation: Elia Peattie and the Chicago Tribune, 1903–1920

Abstract

Elia Peattie (1862–1935), novelist and longtime critic for the Chicago Tribune, played an important role in shaping how American readers viewed Conrad. As a critic, she often returned to Conrad's writings, situating them in a conversation with her own evolving views on international politics, women's suffrage, and feminist rhetoric. As an author, Peattie used Conrad's Chance (1913), in which he explored the contours and limitations of female self-determination, as a touchstone for her own novel The Precipice (1914). In jointly examining Peattie and Conrad, this essay illuminates the work of both authors by revealing Peattie's role in introducing Conrad to the American reading public, and offering new evidence of the significance of Conrad's engagement with gender in Chance, widely regarded as his first novel written for and marketed directly to women. Peattie's engagement with the politics, imperialist as well as gender, of Conrad's fiction brings a fresh perspective to Conrad's reception in the United States. In turn, the radical and feminist translation of Chance’s metaphor of “the precipice” in her own novel casts new light on the poetics of Conrad's representation of women.