Joseph Conrad: Prefaces by Joseph Conrad

Abstract

Reviewed by: Joseph Conrad: Prefaces by Joseph Conrad G.W. Stephen Brodsky (bio) Joseph Conrad. Joseph Conrad: Prefaces. Edited and Foreword by Owen Knowles. Toronto: Fire & Ash Publishers, 2016. 214 pp. ISBN: 9980994009814. THE BOOK At first sight and touch, the physical fact of the 2016 edition of Edward Garnett's 1937 collection of Conrad's prefaces, edited and with a foreword by Owen Knowles, is a bibliophile's joy. Its black hardcover binding, rich and velvety to the hand, features on its front either a brigantine or a barque. Two masts, or two with a short gaff-rigged third, we cannot say.1 If the latter, the image may evoke intimations of the trim barque Otago, Conrad's first and last command. Through a sea mist under a pale gibbous moon the vessel close-hauled with topsails furled, rides, as it were, "stormie seas," symbolic, perhaps, of Conrad's weathering his inner and outer lives before his "sleep after toyle"2 in 1924, the publication year of his collected works. On the back, an image of chalk cliffs, with no Beachy Head lighthouse apparent, yet reminiscent of Conrad's many departures and landfalls in his ships, life, and art. At the not unreasonable price of US $21.00 advertised online at time of this review, this elegant volume will add aesthetic lustre to the Conradian's book shelf. THE EDITOR We have eminent Conradian Owen Knowles, the editor of this version, to thank for this revivifying of the 1937 classic, Conrad's Prefaces to His Works, edited by Edward Garnett, Conrad's loyal friend, mentor, and benefactor. Professor Knowles's Conradian publishing history, as impressive as it is enviable, proves him exceptionally qualified for this task: research fellow at the University of Hull, author, editor, and co-editor of some fifteen books of literary scholarship, including editorship and co-editorship respectively of the Cambridge Edition's Youth, Heart of Darkness, and The End of the Tether, and The Shadow-Line,3 he is also advisory editor for The Conradian (UK). OUR REVIEW, ITS SCOPE AND LIMITS This review, then, is a consideration, not of Conrad's prefaces themselves, but of their presentation by Owen Knowles as editor of the 2016 version of Edward Garnett's original 1937 Dent edition, imputedly a revisiting but in fact a major revision. To this end, we intend to locate this 2016 version in its bibliographic [End Page 257] comparative context. Conrad's prefaces speak for themselves, and over the years many others have spoken for them, including Edward Garnett in his essay contained in the 1937, 1971, and Knowles's 2016 versions, and in his Foreword. So we shall have nothing to say about the prefaces' content. CONRAD'S PREFACES AND IMMORTALITY Twelve years after Conrad's death, Aimé Félix Tschiffely (1895–1954), adventurer and author, selected and wrote an introduction to Rodeo, a collection of stories by Conrad's fellow writer Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852–1936). After his introduction with its quotations of Conrad's admiring comments on his dear friend "Don Roberto," Tschiffely includes a brief prefatory note by Graham who died the year Rodeo was published (and the year before Conrad's Prefaces appeared). Titled "To the Incurious Reader," Graham's few words conclude dismissively of the passage itself, "That, oh, Incurious Reader, is all I have to say to you, by way of preface, foreword, prologue—or anything you choose" (Tschiffely xx). That note is not about the stories Tschiffely has chosen. It is a preface about prefaces, an essay explaining why prefaces no longer were, and ought not to be, written. Arch and macho as the argument is, it tells us "that which oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed": Few writers nowadays [. . .] write prefaces; your best-seller, never. Possibly they do so wisely, for your preface is a snare. It breaks down all the barriers authorship raises between the writer and the man who reads the book. As long as writers strut upon the stage with the cothurnus4 and the mask impersonality affords, they hide behind their characters [. . .]. But in your preface your high-flying bird comes down to earth [. . .]. Then, he...