Joseph Conrad - Softcover

Meyers, Jeffrey

3.82

57 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0719549108 ISBN 13: 9780719549106

Publisher: John Murray, 1991

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The outlines of Conrad's life are well known - how he spent 20 years at sea and amassed the experience he would later transmute into some of the 20th century's finest and most original novels; how he became a great stylist in English, his third language and one he spoke at times incomprehensibly; and how he struggled for success and solvency while presenting himself in the - in fact outlandishly eccentric - guise of an English gentleman. The author reveals much here that is new on Conrad's Polish background, the Carlist Wars in Spain in which he was briefly caught up, his pro-semitism, his suicide attempt, his meeting with T.E.Lawrence, and - most importantly - his love affair with the wild and beautiful American journalist Jane Anderson, who became a traitor in the World War II. He discusses for the first time an unpublished film scenario written by Conrad at the end of his life. There are also many new connections to be found here between characters in Conrad's novels and characters in his life.

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About the Author:

Jeffrey Meyers is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the author of Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography, Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy, Hemingway: Life into Art, and Gary Cooper: An American Hero, (all available from Cooper Square Press), in addition to biographies of Humphrey Bogart, D. H. Lawrence, Edmund Wilson, and George Orwell. He lives in Berkeley, California.

From Publishers Weekly:

To his distinguished biogrpahies of Hemingway, Wyndham Lewis, D. H. Lawrence and others, Meyers now adds a study of the elusive author of Nostromo and Victor , and he comes up with all sorts of little-known or unpublished material. Meyers provides new insights into Conrad's troubled Polish childhood, his harsh 20 years as a seaman, his rash involvement in the Carlist wars, his marriage to a placid woman who was the perfect foil to his neurasthenic personality and his friendships with the likes of Madox Ford, Galsworthy, Stephen Crane and Henry James. In his role as passionate literary detective, Meyers finds real-life sources of lead characters in Heart of Darkness, Under Western Eyes and The Arrow of Gold (about the tempestuous American journalist, Jane Anderson, with whom Conrad had an affair). The author gives us a clear perspective on both the life (1857-1924) and achievements of a writer who, racked by gout, guilt and debt most of his life (his novels were more often praised than read), mastered a foreign language in middle age to become one of its greatest craftsmen. Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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