Product Description

Joseph Conrad's impact has been so profound and far-reaching that, eighty years after his death, he remains an essential cultural reference point. Such phrases as 'heart of darkness' and 'The horror! The horror!' have entered the language, often cited without an awareness of their original contexts. His popular legacy extends to Latin American fiction, to the spy novel, to the terrorist and anarchist character, and to film. The writers he has influenced range from T. S. Eliot to William Faulkner to V. S. Naipaul and John Le Carre. For a writer of 'difficult' fiction he has enjoyed a remarkably wide impact, yet as Marlow proclaims in "Lord Jim" of the figure whose story he tells, 'he was one of us' and so Conrad remains in fascinating ways.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #219999 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From the Inside Flap
When he died in 1924, Virginia Woolf wrote of Joseph Conrad, 'Suddenly, our guest has left us... There was always an air of mystery around him.'

Never quite an Englishman, Conrad is depicted in this authoritative new biography as a man who consistently reinvented himself, transforming fiction into life and, in turn, life into litererature.

Having endured a difficult childhood in the politically repressive Austro-Hungarian empire Conrad took to the seas, first working as a sailor in Marseilles, before joining the British merchant navy and travelling to the Far East and the Congo. Then in 1894, Conrad began his great transformation; after some twenty tears at seaprecarious cash-strapped existence as an Edwardian novelist and anxious family man and father,

Such phrases as the 'heart of darkness" and 'The horror! The horror!' have entered the language, often cited without an awareness of their original contexts - few writers of such determinedly literary, 'difficult' fiction have enjoyed so wide an impact. The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad places into context Conrad's life and work as never before possible, drawing on letters and documents previously unseen. John Stape's evocative portait is complete with period detail and packed with fresh insights into the life of a wilfully enigmatic man who became one of the greatest writers of his, and our, time.

From the Back Cover
Conrad’s impact has been so profound and far-reaching that, eighty years after his death, he remains an essential cultural reference point. Such phrases as "heart of darkness" and "The horror! The horror!" have entered the language, often cited without an awareness of their original contexts. His popular legacy extends to Latin American fiction, to the spy novel, to the terrorist and anarchist character, and to film. The writers he has influenced range from T. S. Eliot to William Faulkner to V. S. Naipaul and John Le Carré. For a writer of ‘difficult’ fiction he has enjoyed a remarkably wide impact, yet as Marlow proclaims in Lord Jim of the figure whose story he tells, ‘he was one of us,’ and so Conrad remains in fascinating ways.

‘Conrad is dead. Two nights ago I finished reading in something like a state of mourning. John Stape has brought him so much to life — a living man, a working writer, not a "study," not a statue — that one can’t help suffering with him… I am so pleased to have had the experience of this book. But it’s as sad as it is triumphant.’ Cynthia Ozick

About the Author
John Stape, Research Fellow in St Mary's University College, Strawberry Hill, London, has taught in universities in Canada, France, and the Far East. He has edited Notes on Life and Letters and A Personal Recordfor The Cambridge Edition of Joseph Conrad and has co-edited Volumes 7 and 9 of The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad. The editor of The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, he is Contributing Editor of The Conradian: The Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society (UK). He has also written on E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Hardy, William Golding, and Angus Wilson.