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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
 
 
 
 

Listings for Author:  

Joseph Conrad

  

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Joseph Conrad : 

'Weaver-novelist William Holt extolled the standard greats ("Noble Carlyle; virtuous Tolstoi; wise Bacon; jolly Rabelais; towering Plato...") and, having taught himself German, memorized Schiller while working at the looms. But he did not limit himself to classics: "I read omnivorously, greedily, promiscuously", from dime novels and G.A. Henty to Hardy and Conrad. Holt disparaged popular authors such as Ethel M. Dell and Elinor Glyn for "peddling vulgar narcotics", yet he was closely attuned to the mass reading public. His own autobiography sold a quarter of a million copes and he once owned a fleet of bookmobiles. He reconciled taste with populism through this logic: though most readers consume a certain amount of junk, it does them no harm because they recognize it as junk'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: William Holt      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Lord Jim

'"Reading for me then was haphazard, unguided, practically uncritical", recalled boilermaker's daughter Marjory Todd. "I slipped all too easily into those traps for the half-baked - books about books, the old 'John O' London's Weekly', chit-chat of one kind or another". Yet in a few years she had advanced to "Moby Dick", "Lord Jim", "Crime and Punishment", and "Wuthering Heights".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Marjory Todd      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : [unknown]

'As a ?1-a-week warehouse clerk in the early 1920s, H.E. Bates spent most of the workday with Conrad, Hardy, Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Ernest Bates      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : 

[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Secret Agent, The

'Conrad?s book, though of course very distinguished, is not as good as his last.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : The Mirror of the Sea

Henry James, in 1 November 1906 letter to Joseph Conrad, writes of having just read and admired "The Mirror of the Sea".

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Chance

Henry James to Hugh Walpole, 5 February 1914: 'I have the volume [one by Walpole] (since last night), and shall attack it as soon as I finish Conrad's "Chance". I have so nearly done this that I shall probably proceed tonight, in bed, to Walpole's Certainty ["The Duchess of Wrexe"].''

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : 

'[Around 1912-13, when she began her association with Mrs Catherine Dawson Scott] Charlotte [Mew] [...] was reading Flaubert as always, Chekhov, Conrad and Verlaine'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew      Print: Unknown

  

Joseph Conrad : [unknown]

'On the wall at the side of the chimney Dad put up the bookshelves which Dodie began to fill with secondhand penny books. Over the years we had Conrad and Wodehouse, Eric Linklater and Geoffrey Farnol, Edgar Wallace, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, Arnold Bennett, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, and a host of others, good, bad and awful, and we read the lot, some of them over and over.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: family of Rose Gamble     Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Almayer's Folly

'Wednesday, 24th March, Today would have been deadly dull but for the Lincoln. Queer how so many of us get caught up in these periodical excitements. I neither know anything or care anything about horse-racing, yet I was looking for a news-boy to know the winner within five minutes of it?s being run. Power of the Press. ?King of Clubs? 100 ? 1, with Donoghue ???? Preparing this evening for Club annual meeting. Read ? ?Almayer?s Folly? (J. Conrad) - Smith?s book. A dismal soul ? Conrad.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : The Nigger of the Narcissus

'That Conrad book is magnificent.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : The Nigger of the Narcissus

'My Dear Wells, I owe you a good turn for pointing out Conrad to me. I remember I got his first book, Almayer?s Folly, to review with a batch of others from Unwin, & feeling at the time rather bored (you know the feeling?I get through 50 or 60 novels a month for two papers) I simply didn?t read it at all?wrote a vague & discreet par. & left it.' I have just read his new book 'The Nigger of the Narcissus', which has moved me to enthusiasm. Where did the man pick up that style, & that synthetic way of gathering up a general impression & flinging it at you? Not only his style, but his attitude, affected me deeply. He is so consciously an artist.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Romance

'I do not think "Romance" is good. In fact it isn?t & I don?t care who knows it. Ever read Dostoevsky?s Crime and Punishment? English translation damnable; but it is a novel. I?m just reading it again.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Nostromo

'I read 'Higuerota' again not long since, I always think of that book as 'Higuerota', the said mountain being the principal personage in the story, When I first read it I thought it the finest novel of this generation (bar none), and I am still thinking so.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : The Secret Agent

'. . . when I recall the quiet domestic scenes behind the shop in 'The Secret Agent' here is rather the sort of thing I reckon to handle myself?but I respectfully retire from the comparison. What I chiefly like in your books of 'Reminiscences' is the increasing sardonic quality of them?the rich veins of dark and glittering satire and sarcasm. There was a lot of it, too, in the latter half of 'Under Western Eyes'. I must tell you that I think the close of ?The Secret Sharer? about as fine as anything you?ve ever done. Overwhelmingly strong and beautiful.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Under Western Eyes

'. . . when I recall the quiet domestic scenes behind the shop in 'The Secret Agent' here is rather the sort of thing I reckon to handle myself?but I respectfully retire from the comparison. What I chiefly like in your books of 'Reminiscences' is the increasing sardonic quality of them?the rich veins of dark and glittering satire and sarcasm. There was a lot of it, too, in the latter half of 'Under Western Eyes'. I must tell you that I think the close of ?The Secret Sharer? about as fine as anything you?ve ever done. Overwhelmingly strong and beautiful.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : The Secret Sharer

'. . . when I recall the quiet domestic scenes behind the shop in 'The Secret Agent' here is rather the sort of thing I reckon to handle myself?but I respectfully retire from the comparison. What I chiefly like in your books of 'Reminiscences' is the increasing sardonic quality of them?the rich veins of dark and glittering satire and sarcasm. There was a lot of it, too, in the latter half of 'Under Western Eyes'. I must tell you that I think the close of ?The Secret Sharer? about as fine as anything you?ve ever done. Overwhelmingly strong and beautiful.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Victory

'I do not think that "Victory" is anything like equal to "Chance". In fact it is not first-rate Conrad, "Chance" is. "Bealby" I have never read. Wells sends me all his books; but he didn’t send "Bealby" along, and I lost the list and didn’t get it.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Chance

'I do not think that "Victory" is anything like equal to "Chance". In fact it is not first-rate Conrad, "Chance" is. "Bealby" I have never read. Wells sends me all his books; but he didn’t send "Bealby" along, and I lost the list and didn’t get it.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : The Arrow of Gold: A Story Between Two Notes

E. M. Forster to Robert Trevelyan, 23 February 1920: 'Mother is reading "The Arrow of Lead" as she calls it, and finds it very slow.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Clara Forster      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Suspense

'Winifred did not care, for she was reading Conrad's "Suspense" - a noble and spacious book which made the early nineteenth century come alive for her in a clear yet faint glow like candlelight."

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : [unknown]

'If one may judge from the young men and women in their twenties who call here - one must accept that exceptionally few of them have any interest in serious or solid reading; indeed, many seem to read hardly anything at all. Last night, for example, M- admitted that she had never read a book through; and her boyfriend claimed that once as a test of will-power he had forced himself to read through three books by Conrad. It would certainly appear that the interwar years had produced a generation restless, and recreated by light amusements.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: anon      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Lord Jim

'The subject before the meeting was Joseph Conrad. R.H. Robson introduced the subject with an interesting essay & a number of readings were given to illustrate his descriptive power & his style. C.I. Evans helped by H.M. Wallis read from Lord Jim Mrs Reynolds - Almayer's Folly Mrs Rawlings - Typhoon Joseph Conrad seemed to have been known to but few of the club before the meeting, but certainly as a result members will turn to his writings with considerable [interest] and find possibly that a new star has sailed into their literary sky. If so one object of the club, to be a literary telescope, will have been achieved.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans and Henry Marriage Wallis     Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Almayer's Folly

'The subject before the meeting was Joseph Conrad. R.H. Robson introduced the subject with an interesting essay & a number of readings were given to illustrate his descriptive power & his style. C.I. Evans helped by H.M. Wallis read from Lord Jim Mrs Reynolds - Almayer's Folly Mrs Rawlings - Typhoon Joseph Conrad seemed to have been known to but few of the club before the meeting, but certainly as a result members will turn to his writings with considerable [interest] and find possibly that a new star has sailed into their literary sky. If so one object of the club, to be a literary telescope, will have been achieved.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Reynolds      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Typhoon

'The subject before the meeting was Joseph Conrad. R.H. Robson introduced the subject with an interesting essay & a number of readings were given to illustrate his descriptive power & his style. C.I. Evans helped by H.M. Wallis read from Lord Jim Mrs Reynolds - Almayer's Folly Mrs Rawlings - Typhoon Joseph Conrad seemed to have been known to but few of the club before the meeting, but certainly as a result members will turn to his writings with considerable [interest] and find possibly that a new star has sailed into their literary sky. If so one object of the club, to be a literary telescope, will have been achieved.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : 

'The subject before the meeting was Joseph Conrad. R.H. Robson introduced the subject with an interesting essay & a number of readings were given to illustrate his descriptive power & his style. C.I. Evans helped by H.M. Wallis read from Lord Jim Mrs Reynolds - Almayer's Folly Mrs Rawlings - Typhoon Joseph Conrad seemed to have been known to but few of the club before the meeting, but certainly as a result members will turn to his writings with considerable [interest] and find possibly that a new star has sailed into their literary sky. If so one object of the club, to be a literary telescope, will have been achieved.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : The Mirror of the Sea

Linking a childhood memory of a great storm with a subsequent reading of Conrad's work: 'The wind blowing from this quarter is not like the south-west wind of the North Atlantic and Britain, a warm wind laden with moisture from hot tropical seas--that great wind that Joseph Conrad in his "Mirror of the Sea" has personified in one of the sublimest passages in recent literature. It is an excessively violent wind, as all mariners know who have encountered it on the South Atlantic off the River Plate ....'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson      Print: Book, Serial / periodical

  

Joseph Conrad : The Secret Agent

'To go back to your book ["Joseph Conrad: A Study"]; I know you thought highly of "Nostromo" but didn't know you placed it quite so far above the other books. The other day I took up "The Secret Agent" and read it through for the first time (Conrad gave me a copy when it was first published). Now I shall do the same with "Nostromo" and read it straight through and try and keep aside the idea it produced when I first began to read it—that the S. American atmosphere is false. [I] mean principally the mental atmosphere—the mind of the natives.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Nostromo

'To go back to your book ["Joseph Conrad: A Study"]; I know you thought highly of "Nostromo" but didn't know you placed it quite so far above the other books. The other day I took up "The Secret Agent" and read it through for the first time (Conrad gave me a copy when it was first published). Now I shall do the same with "Nostromo" and read it straight through and try and keep aside the idea it produced when I first began to read it—that the S. American atmosphere is false. [I] mean principally the mental atmosphere—the mind of the natives.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Under Western Eyes

'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable, such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by "Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the "Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury, Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.' [Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S. "Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : Nostromo

'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable, such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by "Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the "Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury, Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.' [Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S. "Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford      Print: Book

  

Joseph Conrad : The Secret Agent

'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable, such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by "Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the "Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury, Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.' [Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S. "Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford      Print: Book

  

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