Three Exemplary Editions of Heart of Darkness: A Comparative Review of Editorial Modes and Styles

Abstract

Three Exemplary Editions of Heart of DarknessA Comparative Review of Editorial Modes and Styles G. W. Stephen Brodsky (bio) Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness. Edited by Paul B. Armstrong. Fifth Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 2017. 478 pp. ISBN: 9790393264869. Joseph Conrad. Youth, Heart of Darkness, The End of the Tether. Edited by Owen Knowles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 475 pp. ISBN: 9790521197991. The Historian’s Heart of Darkness: Reading Conrad’s Masterpiece as Social and Cultural History. Edited by Mark D. Larabee. Westport, CT: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2019. 178 pp.ISBN: 9781440851063. AN OVERVIEW Editorial Modes. One might expect the unusual occurrence of three editions of the same work in a single review to have an evaluative aim. But no; all these volumes have been critically acclaimed by specialists whose names comprise a veritable Who’s Who of Conrad scholarship. For the present reviewer to add either concurrence or challenge would be an unwarranted presumption. Rather, this revisiting of Heart of Darkness is a comparison of three distinct editing modes, employing equally superb modern scholarly editions as specimen exemplars of each. The MLA’s Guidelines for Editors of Scholarly Editions (June 29, 2011) does not distinguish between the avowed purposes and read-erships of scholarly editions, no doubt on the assumption that variorum versions have a single ideal of fidelity to an original; but editorial motive and aim not only determine the form and content of supporting material, but may even bear on choice of copy text. Fundamentally two discrete yet complementary modes of Conrad editor-ship are in play here: (1) bibliographic (Knowles), aimed at producing an authoritative edition approved by scholarly institutions as the standard for [End Page 181] citation, textual research, and criticism; and (2) pedagogic, of two sorts: critical (Armstrong), with selected critical essays for the student of literature; and historical (Larabee), annotated with historical and cultural context for the student of history and the general reader. While distinct editorial modes cannot be mutually exclusive entirely, the bibliographic edition, while elegant, is not designed to inspire or sustain engagement. Its specialist readership is already inspired and engaged, and is concerned primarily with fidelity to authorial intentions. The histories of the text and its author are vital; the external contextual history is not. However, while of course all reputable scholarly editions meet commonly accepted standards, the editors of pedagogic critical and historical editions’ choice of essays, historical material, graphics, photographs, and maps is primary; choice of copy text is secondary, reflecting editorial preferences in order to inspire engagement with the text, especially for undergraduates. The Advance of Conrad Criticism. The editions of the J.M. Dent & Sons’ 1924–28 Collected Works were produced from Doubleday’s planned 1919–21 mats, which in turn were produced from earlier editions containing Conrad’s own emendations, and with their 1921 Author’s Notes. So, they were at the mercy of Conrad himself in the first instance, then Dent’s (or at least Doubleday’s) copy editors and typesetters. Although published in the infancy of modern bibliographic editing, these Dent 1924–28 versions have hitherto been regarded as “standard,” though not definitive. From the 1930s through the 1950s no bibliographic rigor was applied; nor were there true critical editions. Criticism appeared in books like Muriel Brad-brook’s Joseph Conrad: England’s Polish Genius (1941), in literary magazines for the general reading public such as The Bookman and London Mercury, and passim in early critical biographies: G. Jean-Aubry’s Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters (2 vols., 1927) and The Sea Dreamer (1957), adjudged by Frederick Karl “equally misleading as to fact and focus” (Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives [1979] 974), and Douglas Hewitt’s decline-theory Reassessment (1952). Aside from the preeminent W.W. Norton editions of Heart of Darkness, and decades before the inauguration of the Cambridge University Press (CUP) project, other critical (and editorially defective) versions appeared. A random sampling yields Franklin Walker’s Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer (1969), of whose five “modern” critical essays the oldest (Beach, 1932) was thirty-seven years old, and the then-most recent (Gurko, 1962) was already seven years old. The introduction...