Literary studies Archives - Page 28 of 77

Jane Austen greatest works

September 30, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Jane Austen is renowned for her wit, her lightness of touch, and the elegance of her prose style. There isn’t a great deal of drama in her novels: people fall in and out of love; some of her heroines test our patience; and in the end there is usually a marriage. But the manner in which she orchestrates these events, and her shrewd insights into human frailties have made her an enduringly popular writer. She was writing (almost in secret) at a time when the whole of Europe was in thrall to the novelist Walter Scott. If you read her work now, it’s as fresh as if it had been written last week. Read Walter Scott now, and you’re likely to be asleep within ten pages.

Pride and Prejudice (1813) has the famous opening line “It is a fact universally recognised that a man with a fortune must be in search a wife.” It’s a story of the empty-headed and garrulous Mrs Bennet, who has but one aim in life – to find a good match for each of her daughters. Her husband is a mild-mannered and indolent man, much given to making witty cynicisms about his wife’s weaknesses, and he refuses to take this vulgar prospect seriously. The pride of the title belongs to its hero Mr Darcy, and the prejudice to heroine Elizabeth Bennet, who has lessons to learn from life. This was Jane Austen’s first major success as a novelist – though not the first of her books to be written. It’s a perfect place to start – witty, sophisticated writing, and some well-observed character sketches. It seems as fresh today as ever, and it’s no wonder it has been the subject of so many television and film adaptations.
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Sense and Sensibility (1811) casts two sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood as representatives of ‘sense’ and ‘sensibility’ respectively. Elinor bears her social disappointments with dignity and restraint – and thereby gets her man. Marianne on the other hand is excitable and impetuous, following her lover to London – where she quickly becomes disillusioned with him. Recovering and gaining more ‘sense’, she then sees the good qualities in her old friend Colonel Brandon, who has been waiting in the wings and is now conveniently on hand to propose marriage. Almost all the novels feature a heroine growing in moral intelligence through doubts and adversities – and this is no exception.
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Northanger Abbey (1818) starts in the drawing rooms of Bath. The heroine is imaginative Catherine Morland who falls in love with Henry Tilney, a young clergyman. When he invites her to meet his family at the Abbey however, she sees nothing but Gothic melodrama at every turn – since they were very fashionable at the time. Her visions of medieval horror prove groundless of course. This is Jane Austen’s satirical critique of Romantic cliché and excess. But Catherine eventually learns to see the world in a realistic light – and gets her man in the end. This volume also contains the early short novels Lady Susan and The Watsons, as well as the unfinished Sanditon.
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The Oxford World Classics are the best editions of Jane Austen’s work. They are largely based on the most accurate versions of the texts; and they feature introductory essays, a biography, explanatory notes, textual variants, a bibliography of further reading, and in some cases missing or deleted chapters. They are also terrifically good value.

Mansfield Park (1814) is more serious after the comedy of the earlier novels. Heroine Fanny Price is adopted into the family of her rich relatives. She is long-suffering and passive to a point which makes her almost unappealing – but her refusal to tolerate any drop in moral standards eventually teaches lessons to all concerned. (All that is except standout character Mrs Norris who is a sponging and interfering Aunt you will never forget.) The hero Edmund is dazzled by sexually attractive Mary Crawford – but in the nick of time sees the error of his ways and marries Fanny instead. This is a slow moving narrative, but it is full of moral subtleties.
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Emma (1816) Charming and wilful Emma Woodhouse amuses herself by dabbling in other people’s affairs, planning their lives the way she sees fit. Most of her match-making plots go badly awry, and moral confusion reigns until she abandons her self-delusion and wakes up to the fact that stern but honourable Mr Knightly is the right man for her after all. As usual, money and social class underpin everything. Some wonderful comic scenes, and a rakish character Frank Churchill who finally reveals his flaws by making the journey to London just to get his hair cut.

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Persuasion (1818) is the most mature of her novels, if one of the least exciting. Heroine Anne Elliott has been engaged to Captain Wentworth, but has broken off the engagement in deference to family and friends. Meeting him again eight years later, she goes against conventional wisdom and accepts his second proposal of marriage. Anne is a sensitive and thoughtful character, quite unlike some of the earlier heroines. Jane Austen wrote of her “She is almost too good for me”. There is a shift of location to Lyme Regis for this novel, which reveals for the first time a heroine acting from a deep sense of personal conviction, against the grain of conventional wisdom.
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The Complete Critical Guide to Jane Austen is a good introduction to Austen criticism and commentary. It includes a potted biography, an outline of the novels, and pointers towards the main critical writings – from Walter Scott to critics of the present day. It also includes a thorough bibliography which covers biography, criticism in books and articles, plus pointers towards specialist journals. It also has an interesting chapter discussing Austen on the screen. These guides are very popular.
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Jane Austen greatest works
Jane Austen biographical studies
Jane Austen life and works
Jane Austen literary criticism

Jane Austen life and works

September 30, 2009 by Roy Johnson

1775. Jane Austen born in Steventon rectory, Hampshire, the daughter of a local rector. She was the youngest of seven children. Two brothers go on to serve at sea. Two others enter the church.

1780+. Her father was a competent scholar who encourages her education in English literature, French, and Italian.

1790. Early writing and experiments with what she described as ‘nonsense, burlesque and satire’.

1795. Lady Susan – a short novel written in epistolary form. Elinor and Marianne exists as first draft of what was to become Sense and Sensibility.

1796. Begins to write First Impressions, which was completed as Pride and Prejudice the following year. Reads Fanny Burney (1752-1840) the creator of ‘the novel of home life’.

1798. Northanger Abbey a deliberate satire of the type of Gothic Romance (The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk) then in vogue. It was sold – but not published. This and all her subsequent work was published anonymously.

1801. Father retires to live with family in Bath.

1805. Death of father. The Watsons written about this time.

1807. Family settles to live in Southampton.

1809. Family moves to Chawton, Hampshire (owned by Jane Austen’s brother). She writes all her novels in a corner of one sitting-room surrounded by the entire family.

1811. Sense and Sensibility published. Title pages states ‘By a Lady’. Immediate success.

1813. Pride and Prejudice published and goes into second edition same year.

1814. Mansfield Park published.

1815. Emma published. First translations into French appear.

1817. Writes Sanditon. Dies at Winchester. Buried in the cathedral. Persuasion published posthumously.

Jane Austen web links
Jane Austen greatest works
Jane Austen biographical studies
Jane Austen life and works
Jane Austen literary criticism

Jane Austen literary criticism

September 29, 2009 by Roy Johnson

F.W. Bradbrook, Jane Austen and her Predecessors, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.

Julia Prewitt Brown, Jane Austen’s Novels: Social Change and Literary Form, Cambridge (Mass), 1979.

Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, revised 1987.

W.A. Craick, Jane Austen: the Six Novels, London: Methuen, 1965.

D.D. Devlin, Jane Austen and Education, London, 1975.

Alistair M. Duckworth, The Improvement of the Estate: A Study of Jane Austen’s Novels, Baltimore (Md) and London, 1971.

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination, New Haven and London, 1979.

John Halperin (ed), Jane Austen Bicentenary Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Barbara Hardy, A Reading of Jane Austen, London, 1975.

Joycelyn Harris, Jane Austen’s Art of Memory, Cambridge, 1989.

Claudia L. Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel, Chicago and London, 1988.

Margaret Kirkham, Jane Austen: Feminism and Fiction, Brighton and Totawa (NJ) 1983.

Mary Lascelles, Jane Austen and her Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963.

A. Walton Litz, Jane Austen: a Study of her Artistic Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965.

Juliet McMaster (ed), Jane Austen’s Achievement, London: Macmillan, 1976.

David Monaghan, Jane Austen in a Social Context, Totawa (NJ) 1981.

Laura G. Mooneyham, Romance, Language, and Education in Jane Austen’s Novels, New York and Basingstoke, 1988.

Susan Morgan, In the Meantime: Character and Perception in Jane Austen’s Fiction, Chicago, 1980.

Norman Page, The Language of Jane Austen, London: Blackwell, 1972.

K.C. Phillips, Jane Austen’s English, London: Andre Deutsch, 1970.

F.B. Pinion, A Jane Austen Companion, London: Macmillan, 1976.

Warren Roberts, Jane Austen and the French Revolution, New York, 1979.

B.C. Southam, Jane Austen’s Literary Manuscripts: A Study of the Novelist’s Development through the Surviving Papers, London and New York, 1964.

B.C. Southam (ed), Critical Essays on Jane Austen, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969.

B.C. Southam (ed), Jane Austen: the Critical Heritage, 2 vols, London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1968-87.

Alison G. Sulloway, Jane Austen and the Province of Womanhood, Philadelphia, 1989.

Tony Tanner, Jane Austen, London: Macmillan, 1986.

Ian Watt (ed), Jane Austen: a Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs (NJ): Prentice-Hall, 1963.

Jane Austen web links
Jane Austen greatest works
Jane Austen biographical studies
Jane Austen life and works
Jane Austen literary criticism

Jane Austen web links

December 9, 2010 by Roy Johnson

a selection of web-based archives and resources

This short selection of Jane Austen web links offers quick connections to resources for further study. It’s not comprehensive, and if you have any ideas for additional resources, please use the ‘Comments’ box below to make suggestions.

Jane Austen at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews, study guides, videos, and web links.

Jane Austen at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Jane Austen at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, further reading, and web links.

Jane Austen at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production, box office, film reviews, trivia, and even quizzes.

Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton
Resources and a virtual tour at the house where Jane Austen was born. Contains an online shop, educational materials, and links to YouTube videos of conferences and celebration events.

The Jane Austen Centre in Bath
Web site of the exhibition centre, featuring bus tours in the city , a newsletter, online shop, and a Jane Austen quiz.

The Republic of Pemberley
Large-scale site covering resources. free eTexts, and discussion groups engaged in ongoing debates about the novels and their characters, plus lists of names and places.

The Complete Works of Jane Austen
Kindle eBook single download for £0.74 at Amazon – contains all the novels, plus early works. The equivalent of 2,250 pages of text.

The Jane Austen Society of the UK
Web site of the semi-academic society, featuring publications, meetings, and discussion groups – plus items on clothing and forthcoming events.

A Hyper-Concordance to Jane Austen
Japan-based research tool which allows you to locate any word or phrase in context – covers all the novels and the early works.

Jane Austen in Japan
Home pages of Jane Austen web sites, eTexts of all the novels, discussion groups, and academic resources. The work of Victorian specialist Mitsuharu Matsuoka.

Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts
Digitised facsimilies of works in her own handwriting – 1,100 pages – see the original manuscripts of the novels in Jane Austen’s own writing, complete with scholarly annotated print versions of the text.

The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen This fully updated edition offers clear, accessible coverage of the intricacies of Austen’s works in their historical context, with biographical information and suggestions for further reading. Major scholars address Austen’s six novels, the letters and other works, in terms accessible to students and the many general readers, as well as to academics. With seven new essays, the Companion now covers topics that have become central to recent Austen studies, for example, gender, sociability, economics, and the increasing number of screen adaptations of the novels.

Jersey Villas

August 21, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Jersey Villas was first published in Cosmopolitan Magazine in July—August 1892. Its next appearance in book form was as part of the collection The Real Thing and Other Stories, published by Macmilla in New York and London the following year in 1893. When it appeared in book form it was given a different title – Sir Dominick Ferrand.

It is one of a number of tales which James wrote on the theme of private papers and letters, the practice of biography, and the rights of an individual to privacy, even after death. James created a bonfire of his own personal papers in the fear of what writers and critics might find out about his private life after his demise. Of course we now know that he had a lot more to hide than was hitherto thought.

A davenport desk

Jersey Villas – critical commentary

The story is composed of two dramatic elements. The first is Peter Baron’s discovery of the letters in his writing desk, and his dilemma regarding what to do with them – to publish them, sell them, or hand them over to his editor Mr Locket. The second element is his developing romantic relationship with Mrs Ryves, which is reinforced by his writing a successful libretto for her musical composition.

For the first-time reader there is a dramatic tension (or mystery) in how these two elements are going to be related. James seems to be hinting at some mystical or intuitive connection between Mrs Ryves and Baron’s dealings with the letters. She is agitated or distressed whenever he tries to make a decision about them. There is also something of a mystery about her claims to be leaving Jersey Villas, followed by her failure to do so.

Her connection with the letters and her indecision about staying or leaving the Villas is easily explained at a later stage. She is the illegitimate daughter of Sir Dominick Ferrand, and the revelation of his private mis-doings will (or might) adversely affect her. She senses that Baron has discovered something and visits him on a ‘sudden fancy’ to check. Then as soon as he has told her about breaking the seals, she leaves the Villas and goes to Dover, where she is ‘looking at the Calais boat’ whilst in discussion with him. In other words, she is planning her escape to ‘Europe’ (which was considered a different world in the nineteenth century).

All the hints and development within the plot suggest that her erratic behaviour is the result of her knowing that Baron has her father’s letters. This explains why she is so keen that he burn them, and once she is secure in the knowledge that he has done so, she can relax and form a relationship with him.

But this interpretation of the story, which is certainly invited by the events of the story, rests on two or three flaws, and it is distinctly possible that James is playing fast and loose with his famous ambiguity and evasiveness in this instance. To begin with, at no point does Mrs Ryves know who has written the letters. There is no writing on the outside of the letters, and they are in packets that are sealed. She even tells Baron that she doesn’t want to know who wrote them.

It might be argued that she recognises the letters, or even that the davenport Baron bought originally belonged to her father. But there is also nothing in the text to support either of these two explanations – and she she is not raised in her paternal home, so it is very unlikely that any form of ‘recognition’ takes place.

Jersey Villas – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1892—1898 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1892—1898 – Library of America – Amazon US

Jersey Villas – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Jersey Villas – plot summary

Part I. Aspiring writer Peter Baron has been summoned by Mr Locket, the editor of The Promiscuous Review, to make changes to a story he has submitted. That morning he has made the acquaintence of Mrs Ryves, a fellow lodger of Mrs Bundy at Jersey Villas, a suburban lodging house. After his meeting with the editor, he walks down the Kings Road, dreaming of refurbishing his humble rooms. On the strength of his submitted story, he buys a small second-hand davenport, which he hopes could inspire his literary creation.

Part II. Baron befriends Mrs Ryves and her son, and he writes lyrics for the songs she composes as an amateur pianist, guiltily conscious that he ought to be correcting his story for the magazine. He discovers that the davenport has a false back, where he finds packets of old letters. When Mrs Ryves calls, claiming she has been worried about him, he decides to tell her about his discovery. She urges him to keep the letters, and claims that she felt an instinct to ‘save’ the papers. And yet she also suggests that he burn them.

Part III. Ten days later Baron visits Mr Locket and tells him he has new materials on Sir Dominick Farrand, an eminent stateman. He insists that they are genuine and not forgeries. Locket does not think the public will be much interested in him now that he is dead. Baron insists that he was a complex person, and that the letters reveal some dubious political dealings, as he had received money from people to whom he had awarded contracts. They also reveal evidence of an extra-marital affair. Baron and Locket circle round each other inconclusively over what is to be done.

Part IV. When Mrs Ryves goes to Dover, Baron asks Mrs Bundy for information about her, but gets very little information. So he goes to Dover, where he meets Mrs Ryves with her son Sydney and Miss Teagle, a governess to Sydney. He reproaches Mrs Ryves for disappearing as soon as he made his discovery known to her. She claims that the papers ‘haunt’ her. He cannot understand why she is bothered about them at all. He wants to ask her to marry him, but realises that he has nothing to offer her.

Part V. Next day Mr Locket turns up and ‘borrows’ the letters, which makes Baron anxious about his motives. Mrs Ryves writes from Dover about their musical collaboration. Then Locket summons him and offers £100 for the letters. Baron is conflicted over his options: he is badly in debt and needs the money, but he can see Locket profiteering from his advantageous position as influential editor.

Part VI. When Baron returns to Jersey Villas he finds Mrs Ryves who claims she is packing to leave, but doesn’t appear to be doing so. He takes her out to dinner and the theatre, and later tries to improve his chances with her, but she puts him off.

Part VII. Mr Locket turns up again next morning with an offer increased to £300, whilst meanwhile Mrs Ryves is leaving the Villas. Baron tries to plea bargain with Locket for his fiction to be accepted as part of the deal. Locket at first refuses, then gives in. But on reflection, Baron feels that it would be wrong to make money out of exposing someone’s reputation to disgrace, and he burns the letters.

Mrs Ryves returns to say that a music publisher has accepted their joint composition and wants more of the same. They share the £50 fee and at Dover return to the question of their future. She reveals that she is a ‘poor girl’ with no money, family, or friends. She ultimately rveals that she is the illegitimate daughter of Sir Dominick Ferrand. After a probationary period, they marry, have success in music publishing, and Baron even manages to get some of his fiction published in magazines.

Jersey Villas – principal characters

Peter Baron	an aspiring young writer
Mr Locket	editor of The Promiscuous Review
Mrs Ryves	a poor widow and pianist
Sydney	her young son
Mrs Bundy	landlady at Jersey Villas
Miss Teagle	governess to Sydney

Other works by Henry James

Washington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
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The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
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The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
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Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

More tales by James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

John Delavoy

March 27, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

John Delavoy was first published in Cosmopolis magazine for January—February in 1898. It is one of the many stories Henry James wrote towards the end of the century that are concerned with literary life, critical reputations, the relationship between authors and biography, and the actual profession of ‘letters’ in its commercial workings. (Others include The Aspern Papers (1888), The Coxon Fund (1894), The Death of the Lion (1894), The Figure in the Carpet (1896), and The Abasement of the Northmores (1900),

James was intensely concerned with his own literary reputation, which had taken a powerful knock when he was booed off stage when taking the author’s bow at the first night of his play Guy Domville in 1895. He took great care in revising his own work, and both rewrote his own novels and composed powerfully defensive prefaces to them when they were published in the twenty-four volume New York edition of his selected works in 1910. John Delavoy deals with the relationship between author and magazine editor, where financial and aesthetic objectives sometimes produced dramatic collisions.

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

John Delavoy – critical commentary

The narrative

The story at its outset seems destined to be relayed via the account of yet another of Henry James’s unreliable narrators. It begins with not one but two false identifications in the theatre. The narrator’s companion mistakes Beston for Lord Yarrocombe, and then the narrator himself assumes Miss Delavoy to be Delavoy’s wife, when she is in fact his sister.

Moreover, the narrator is full of false confidence and self-importance. Speaking of his own article, he describes it as

a summary of the subject, deeply interesting and treated, as I thought, with extraordinary art, of the work to which I gave the highest place in my author’s array.

And yet in the end he does not turn out to be unreliable. His rival the editor Beston is revealed as vulgar and unprincipled. He wishes to profit from Delavoy’s reputation as a novelist, but will not allow any examination of what he is famous for – his work – on the grounds that ‘relations between the sexes’ has no place in his magazine The Cynosure. The narrator (and Miss Delavoy) are presented as those who truly value the novelist’s work

James’s inspiration for this story sprang out of a similar conflict he had endured after writing an article on Alexander Dumas. A publisher turned it down on the grounds that the content of Dumas’s work was not acceptable. James records his own reaction and the germs for his inspiration in his Notebooks:

Oh the whole thing does open up as a donnée! Their hope that one would have given a ‘personal’ account of a distinguished man, a mere brief, reserved, simply intelligible statement of the subject matter [of] whose work is too scandalous to print. They want to seem to deal with him because he is famous—and he is famous because he wrote certain things which they won’t for the world have intelligibly mentioned. So they desire the supreme though clap-trap tribute of an intimate picture, without even the courage of saying on what ground they desire any mention of him at all.

So James settled the historical score against short-sighted magazine editors, yet curiously enough he didn’t match the achievement of his far more sombre tales. There is no ironic distance between narrator and the narrative he delivers. We are forced to take what he says at face value, and are led into accepting the story as a mildly amusing spat between upholders of aesthetic value and managers of the literary marketplace.

A secondary theme

It’s interesting to note that the themes of authorship, biography, and reputation are also linked with a recurrent preoccupation of James’s at the time – the question of whether to marry or not. In stories such as The Beast in the Jungle, Owen Wingrave, and The Altar of the Dead the decision to avoid marriage is seen as leading to emotional bankruptcy and even death. These powerful tales are generally regarded as amongst the highest achievements of James as an author of short stories.

James Delavoy is altogether lighter in tone, and we are given every reason to believe that the conclusion of the narrative is to be taken as a positive outcome which has resulted in marriage. The narrator reports ‘we had achived the union that—at least for resistance or endurance—is supposed to be strength’ He and Miss Delavoy are united in their admiration for the novelist’s work, and have that as intellectual comfort in the face of Beston’s empty triumph on The Cynosure with his crass pursuit of readership and cheap publicity.

Yet comparison with stories offering more sombre variations on the same theme reveals their amazing strength, John Delavoy is not nearly so aesthetically satisfying as Owen Wingrave, or The Beast in the Jungle. The conclusion to the story is amazingly rushed – as if James had lost interest in his subject and was eager to get it out of the way.

In fact the pencil sketch over which they have expended so much emotional energy is first described by the narrator ‘as a flower in the coat of a bridegroom’. Defenders of James’s achievement in this story might well wish to quote this as a clever pre-echo of the outcome, or even a sub-conscious wish on the part of the narrator.

James never did marry, but he certainly gave the matter a lot of thought. In this story he gives artistic expression to a heterosexual relationship with a positive if conventional outcome. But as an artistic resolution it does not seem persuasive or satisfying – as if he couldn’t really quite believe in it himself.

John Delavoy – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1892—1898 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1892—1898 – Library of America – Amazon US

The Complete Tales (Vol 9) – Paperback edition – Amazon UK

Selected Tales – Penguin Classics edition – Amazon UK

John Delavoy – print on demand reissue – Amazon UK

John Delavoy – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

John Delavoy – plot summary

An un-named narrator has written a literary appreciation of John Delavoy, a novelist who has recently died. At the first night performance of an unsuccessful play he sees Miss Delavoy, the novelist’s sister who is in morning for her brother. She is accompanied by Mr Beston, the editor of The Cynosure a literary magazine.

When the narrator visits Beston he persuades him to accept an article on Delavoy to make the public aware of his greatness. Beston is reluctant, but agrees on condition that Miss Delavoy approves it first – which she does.

Publication is delayed however, and Miss Delavoy is upset on the narrator’s behalf. She has drawn a sketch of Delavoy, the only known portrait, which is offered to Beston as an inducement to adorn the article and speed up publication.

But when the essay is set in galley proofs, Beston rejects it as unacceptable on the grounds that it is ‘indecent’ because it deals with ‘relations between the sexes’. He wants Miss Delavoy to write instead a personal memoir of her brother which will include lightweight gossip for his readers.

Miss Delavoy and the narrator are both outraged at this suggestion. She asks the narrator to be present at a meeting with Beston where she insists that he print the article. She also threatens to withdraw permission to use the portrait.

But Beston puts the interests of his circulation figures above all else, refuses to give in, and obviously has no appreciation of John Delavoy at all. The narrator tries to recover the portrait from him, but fails.

The portrait appears in the magazine, accompanied by a couple of pages of lightweight comment, and proves to be a big success. The narrator publishes his original article elsewhere – to little effect – but by way of compensation it is strongly implied that he marries Miss Delavoy.

Principal characters

I	the un-named narrator, a writer and literary critic
Windon	an unsuccessful dramatist
John Delavoy	an ‘immense novelist’ who has recently died
Miss Delavoy	his sister
Mr Beston	editor of The Cynosure, a literary magazine

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

Daisy Miller (1879) is a key story from James’s early phase in which a spirited young American woman travels to Europe with her wealthy but commonplace mother. Daisy’s innocence and her audacity challenge social conventions, and she seems to be compromising her reputation by her independent behaviour. But when she later dies in Rome the reader is invited to see the outcome as a powerful sense of a great lost potential. This novella is a great study in understatement and symbolic power.
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&copy Roy Johnson 2012

Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

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John Middleton Murry

January 31, 2018 by Roy Johnson

poet, critic, pacifist, publisher

John Middleton Murry (1889)-1957) was an influential and prolific writer in the English modernist period. He is probably best known for his problematic marriage to fellow writer Katherine Mansfield and his association with D.H. Lawrence. He produced over sixty books plus countless essays on literature, social issues, and religious topics.

Murry (without the ‘a’) was born in Peckham, the son of a clerk in the Inland Revenue. He was educated at Christ’s Hospital (‘Bluecoat School’) before winning an exhibition scholarship and going on to Brasenose College Oxford to study classics. He finished with a first class degree in 1910.

Whilst still an undergraduate he founded the magazine Rhythm, which was thought at the time to be a daringly suggestive title. Interestingly it was later re-named in 1914 as The Blue Review.

Around the same time Murry met the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield, who he made an associate editor of his magazine, which published some of her short stories. They embarked on a stormy relationship that included infidelities by both parties.

Murry was judged unfit for military service during the First World War, but he did work for the political intelligence service in the War Office as editor of the confidential Daily Review of the Foreign Press. He spent some time with pacifists and conscientious objectors who assembled at the home of Philip and Ottoline Morrell at Garsington Manor in Oxford.

There he became close friends with D.H. Lawrence and Frieda Von Richthofen. The relationships between the two couples were used as fictional material for Lawrence’s novel, Women in Love. Murry and Mansfield went to live as their neighbours, first in Buckinghamshire, then at Zennor in Cornwall. There was an attempt at communal living which collapsed fairly quickly.

In 1915 Murry and Lawrence established a new magazine called The Signature. Like many other small minority-interest publications it folded quickly – after only three issues. In 1918 Murry married Katherine Mansfield and they settled near Hampstead Heath, together with Ida Baker, one of Mansfield’s former lovers.

Murry was appointed in 1919 as editor of the literary magazine Athenaeum. It featured writing by Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, and T.S. Eliot. Two years later it became The Nation and Athenaeum. Murry moved on to become founding editor of The Adelphi. This magazine featured a rather curious mixture of literature, quasi-Marxist politics, and a return-to-the-land ethos.

Katherine Mansfield

When Katherine Mansfield moved to live in France with Ida Baker, Murry began a dalliance with Princess Bibesco – the daughter of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. Mansfield hurried back to London in order to squash the liaison.

In 1922 Murry published what was to be his most popular and influential work, The Problem of Style. He also began an affair with Mansfield’s house-mate Dorothy Brett which resulted in a pregnancy and a miscarriage.

Following Mansfield’s death in 1924, Murry edited her stories, her journals, and her diaries. This was done with the intention of promoting her literary reputation, the success of which generated a considerable income for Murry in royalties. But in the time that has passed since these publications he has been criticised for watering down her more radical views.

Following the death of Lawrence in 1930, Murry began a brief affair with his widow Frieda. He married for the third time in 1931 and also began a brief phase as a Marxist. He then moved from a socialist to a radical Christian, pacifist, and communalist ideology.

In 1942 as a conscientious objector he bought a farm in Thelnethan in Sussex and set up a commune for fellow objectors to be run on co-operative lines. The experiment had mixed results, and it ended up with Murry managing it as a conventional farm on commercial lines.

He maintained his pacifist views consistently through the Second World War and became the editor of Peace News from 1940 to 1946. He also published biographical studies of Keats, John Clare, and Jonathan Swift.

Later he renounced pacifism and advocated a preventative war against the Soviet Union. He became a Conservative voter, an anti-feminist, and died in 1957 at Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.

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Jorge Luis Borges biography

December 6, 2010 by Roy Johnson

essayist, librarian, master of the modern short story

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) – full name Jorge Francisco Isodoro Luis Borges Acevedo – was born in Buenos Aires Argentina into an educated middle-class family. His father was a lawyer and a teacher of psychology who was part Spanish, part Portuguese, and half English. His mother was Uruguayan of Spanish descent. They lived in a lower-class suburb famous for its cabarets, brothels, knife fights and the tango.

He grew up in a house speaking both English and Spanish (as a child he thought they were the same language) and was he taught at home until he was eleven years old. The family lived in a large house with over one thousand volumes in English in its library. Despite the raffish nature of the neighbourhood, Borges reflected later in life that the two principal features of his childhood were his father’s library and a large garden – both of which feature prominently in his writing.

When he was only nine years old Borges translated Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince into Spanish, and it was published in a local journal. His friends all thought it was the work of his father.

In 1914 the family moved to Geneva, Switzerland where his father was seeking treatment for his failing eyesight. Borges attended school, learned French, read Carlyle in English, and began to study philosophy in German. The family travelled to Spain, and because of political unrest in Argentina at the time, decided to stay in Switzerland during the war.

Jorge Luis Borges received his baccalauréate from the College de Geneve in 1918. The family stayed in Europe after the war, living in Lugano, Barcelona, Majorca, Seville, and Madrid. Whilst in Spain Borges became attracted to the avant garde Ultraist literary movement inspired by Appolinaire and Marinetti. He also published his first poems.

In 1921 the family returned to Buenos Aires, where Borges published his first collection of poems Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923) a sixty-four page booklet paid for by his father and with a cover designed by his sister Norah. There was no profit made from this enterprise: he simply gave the book away to anybody who was interested. He produced journalism, essays, and book reviews, and contributed to the avant-garde review Martin Fierro.

The family returned to Switzerland in 1923 so that his father could resume treatment for his eyes, and when they returned to Argentina the following year, Borges discovered that he had developed a reputation as poet on the strength of his first book. In 1929 his book Cuaderno San Martin won a Municipal Prize, the prize money for which he spent on a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica.

In 1931 Borges began publishing in the literary journal Sur established by Victoria Ocampo, which helped him to establish his literary reputation. He wrote works including parodies of detective stories with another Argentinean writer Adolfo Bioy Casares under the name H. Bustos Domecq. He also began to explore existential themes in his work, drawing a great deal of his inspiration not from his own personal life, but from his experience of literature.

He was appointed editor at the literary supplement of newspaper Critica in 1933 where he published works that were a blend of non-fictional essays and short stories. These were later collected under the title of A Universal History of Infamy (1936). The collection explored two types of writing. The first used a combination of the essay and the short story to tell what were really true stories. The second were literary spoofs or forgeries – texts which he passed off as translations of little-known works, but which were in fact his own inventions.

In 1935 he published the prototype of what is now considered a typical ‘Borgesian’ short story – ‘The Approach to Mu’tasim – a review of an imaginary novel. He had been influenced by his reading of Thomas Carlyle’s Sator Resartus, a book comprised of reflections on the work and life of an imaginary German philosopher. It is a mark of Borges preference for shorter literary genres (and what he jokingly called his ‘laziness’) that rather than creating complete imaginary works, he thought it was more inventive to conjure up their existence by writing reviews of them as if they actually existed.

Between 1936 and 1939 he wrote a weekly column for El Hogar, and in 1939 found work as an assistant in the Buenos Aires Municipal Library. His duties were so light he could complete them in the first hour. He spent the rest of the day in the basement, writing and translating the work of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner into Spanish. His first volume of short stories The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) collected work he had previously published in Sur.

His eyesight began to fade in the late 1930s and, unable to support himself as a writer, he began giving public lectures. He lived with his widowed mother, who became his personal secretary. Although he relied a great deal on his imaginative responses to literature, he never learned to read Braille. He became completely blind by the late 1950s.

When Juan Peron came to power in 1946 Borges was ‘promoted’ to the job of Inspector of Rabbits and Poultry in the Public Markets, a post from which he immediately resigned. He was elected to the presidency of the Argentine Writer’s Society in 1950 and given the job of director of the National Library in 1955, even though he was by that time completely blind.

Some of his work was translated into English during the 1940s and 1950s, but his international reputation dates from the early 1960s when he was awarded the International Publisher’s Prize, the Prix Formentor – which he shared with Samuel Beckett. He was appointed for a year to the Chair of literature at the University of Texas at Austin, and went on to give lecture tours in America and Europe.

Two major anthologies of his work were published in 1962 – Ficciones and Layrinths – which further enhanced his international reputation. In 1967 Borges embarked on a five year period of collaboration with the American translator Norman Thomas di Giovanni which helped to make his work better known in the English-speaking world.

Then in 1967 Jorge Luis Borges married an old friend Elsa Astete Millan who had become a widow, but the marriage only lasted three years. Borges went back to his mother, with whom he lived until her death at the age of almost one hundred. He travelled extensively on lecture tours, and published further collections of his work – The Book of Sand, Dr Brodie’s report, and The Book of Imaginary Beings.

In 1986, a few months before his death, he married his literary assistant Maria Kodama, who thereby gained control of his literary estate and the considerable income from it. Despite international protests, she rescinded all publishing rights for the existing collections of his work and commissioned new translations.

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Joseph Conrad and Cinema

May 22, 2016 by Roy Johnson

film adaptations of Joseph Conrad’s novels and stories

Joseph Conrad and Cinema (literature and film) might seem an odd juxtaposition of genres, but in fact almost a hundred adaptations of Conrad’s works have been made for cinema and television. His work has also been transposed to works for opera and for television. The following selection was made on the basis of films which are currently available in DVD format.

There seem to be three theories of adaptation from prose narrative to cinema – just as there are three notions of translation from one language to another. The film critic Geoffrey Wagner described these as transposition, commentary, and analogy.

The first (transposition) is used to describe an attempt to make the cinematic adaptation of a literary text as accurate and as close to the original as possible in the language of film. This means that there will be no significant additions, deletions, or changes to the original.

The second (commentary) allows for the raw materials of a narrative to be rearranged or used as the basis for a re-interpretation of the basic story line. In this case the sequence of events in a drama might be given a different chronological arrangement, or its characters given new descriptions or motivations.

In the third (analogy) the source materials are used as the inspiration for a completely new creation which acts as an analogy or a metaphor of the original. In this case a story might be transposed to a different historical period or a different cinematic genre. The original will still be recognised, but it is being used for a different purpose.

Victory (novel 1913 – film 1996)

This was the first of Joseph Conrad’s works to be turned into a film when an American silent movie version was released in 1919. A second version appeared in 1930 produced by Paramount with the title Dangerous Paradise, which was one of the earliest films with a sound track recorded at sea. There was another Paramount version in 1940 directed by John Cromwell.

Coming from the Hollywood world of popular entertainment, it is not surprising that these three film versions focus their attention on the sentimental romantic link between a heroic protagonist (Heyst) and the threatened heroine (Alma) whom he rescues. The emphasis of the film versions is on exotic locations and a conventional love story. All three adaptations conclude with the very un-Conradian device of a happy ending – which completely destroys the bitter dramatic ironies in the events and personal tragedies of the original text. Later versions such as the 1996 adaptation below remain more faithful to the original plot.

Directed and adapted by Mark Peploe. Starring – Willem Dafoe (Axel Heyst), Sam Neil (Mr Jones), Rufus Sewell (Martin Ricardo), Irene Jacob (Alma), Simon Callow (Zangiacomo), Jean Yanne (Wilhelm Schomberg), and Mark Patterson (Captain Davidson). This version was filmed in Java.

Victory – DVD film adaptation – Amazon UK

Details of the film – at the Internet Movie Database

Victory – a tutorial and study guide

Victory – Oxford Classics- Amazon UK

Victory – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

The Secret Agent (novel 1907 – film 1936)

One of the most celebrated adaptations of a Conrad text is Alfred Hitchcock’s version of The Secret Agent, which was re-named Sabotage (1936) for cinema release in England. This was to distinguish it from Hitchcock’s other film Secret Agent based on the Ashenden stories by Somerset Maugham which was produced in the same year. When Sabotage was released two months later in the United States it was re-named yet again as The Woman Alone. This proved unpopular, so the original title was restored.

Hitchcock takes enormous liberties with the substance of Conrad’s deeply ironic political thriller: He invents a positive hero (the police sergeant, Ted); he creates a romantic liaison with the main female character Winnie Verloc; and he even gives the story a happy ending.

Hitchcock plays down the collusion that exists in the novel between government and anarchists, and the upper class society in which representatives of both groups circulate. And in a typical piece of self-reference, he transposes Verloc’s seedy newsagent’s shop (selling pornography) to a cinema.

Despite these changes, the film captures some of the tone of the original text – largely because Hitchcock, like Conrad, is fond of using irony – in his case visual juxtapositions that create a satirical author’s point of view on events – something with which Conrad’s text is drenched from start to finish.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Charles Bennett. Starring – Sylvia Sidney (Winnie Verloc), Oscar Homulka (Adolf Verloc), John Loder (Sergeant Ted), and Desmond Tester (Stevie). Filmed at Gainsborough Studios, London.

Sabotage – Hitchcock’s 1936 film adaptation – Amazon UK

Details of the film – the Internet Movie Database

The Secret Agent – a tutorial and study guide

The Secret Agent – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

The Secret Agent – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

A 1996 version, written and directed by Christopher Hampton, stays reasonably close to the original story line, but despite an all-star (yet ill-assorted) cast the result is a less than convincing whole – which probably accounts for the film’s mediocre rating of 50% at Rotten Tomatoes.

Directed by Christopher Hampton, screenplay by Christopher Hampton, with music by Philip Glass. Starring – Bob Hoskins (Adolf Verloc), Patricia Arquette (Winnie Verloc), Gerard Depardieu (Ossipon), Jim Broadbent (Chief Inspector Heat), Eddie Izzard (Vladimir), Robin Williams (The Professor). Filmed in Ealing Studios and Greenwich, London.

The Secret Agent – 1996 film adaptation on DVD – Amazon UK

Heart of Darkness (novella 1902 – film 1979)

Without doubt the best known cinematic adaptation of Conrad’s work is
Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), his version of Heart of Darkness. It is successful precisely because it is not a faithful reproduction of the original novella, but a very imaginative interpretation of it.

The film realization transforms events from Europe’s imperialist exploitation of the Belgian Congo to America’s war in Vietnam in the 1960s. Even so, it remains amazingly faithful to the original. The narrator Marlow becomes Captain Willard, who is sent on a mission to terminate (‘with extreme prejudice’) the command of rogue Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, who has gone over the border into Cambodia with a band of followers.

It is worth noting that the film exists in a number of different versions – because it was edited several times. Minor variations aside, the most significant alternative option is called Apocalypse Now – Redux. This extended version includes a long sequence that was cut from the original where Willard visits an old French colonial plantation. I have watched both versions several times, and in my opinion the inclusion of the French plantation episode slows down the film and retards its dramatic momentum.

The only other point of note is that the film was originally distributed with two separate endings. In one, Willard kills Kurtz then returns to his boat and calls in an air strike which will (presumably) destroy the encampment. In the other he merely switches off the radio that is trying to contact him, and he sails away, back down river.

Director Francis Ford Coppola. Screenplay by Coppola and John Milius. Starring – Marlon Brando (Colonel Kurtz), Robert Duval (Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore), Martin Sheen (Captain Willard), Dennis Hopper (Photo Journalist), Harrison Ford (Colonel Lucas), Sam Bottoms (Lance Johnson). Filmed in the Philippines.

Apocalypse Now – 1979 DVD film – Amazon UK

Details of the film – the Internet Movie Database

Heart of Darkness – a tutorial and study guide

Heart of Darkness – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Heart of Darkness – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

In 1939 Orson Welles planned to make a film version of Heart of Darkness, but the project ran over budget and ultimately was abandoned. Welles turned the adaptation into a work for radio, and the following year made Citizen Kane instead.

There is also a 1994 version by the English director Nicholas Roeg that stays reasonably close to the original narrative. This stars John Malkovich (Kurtz) and Tim Roth (Marlow), with James Fox in a supporting role. This adaptation was made for Ted Turner’s television network. Filmed in Belize and London, UK.

Heart of Darkness – 1994 DVD film – Amazon UK

Lord Jim (novel 1900 – film 1965)

This 1965 adaptation of Lord Jim by Richard Brooks turns the dark moral complexities of the original novel into an epic action-adventure story shot in wide-screen Technicolour. It also reduces the fragmented temporal arrangement of events into a simplified linear narrative, as well as blending some of the characters. There is also considerable simplification of the political and racial issues of the original narrative. Moreover, the central figure is transformed and loses all semblance of ambiguity. As the critic Gene M. Moore observes: ‘The Jim of the film is a conscious political activist in the style of the sixties, a determined man of action, quite unlike Conrad’s ‘romantic’ protagonist.’

Directed and adapted by Richard Brooks. Starring – Peter O’Toole (Jim), James Mason (Gentleman Brown), Curt Jurgens (Cornelius), Eli Wallach (The General), Jack Hawkins (Marlow), Dalia Lavi (The Girl), and Akim Tamiroff (Schomberg). Filmed in Hong Kong and Cambodia, with additional scenes in Shepperton Studios, London.

Lord Jim – DVD – Amazon UK

Details of the film – at the Internet Movie Database

Lord Jim – a tutorial and study guide

Lord Jim – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Lord Jim – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

An Outcast of the Islands (novel 1896 – film 1951)

This is highly regarded amongst film critics as an acceptable combination of a faithful account of the original text with a persuasive film in its own right. Director Carol Reed sticks closely to the plot of the original novel, although he completely changes the geographic locations of the action. He also disregards some of the racial details which are an important part of ethnic tensions in the original narrative.

However, the most glaring difference between the novel and its adaptation is that Reed only uses four of the book’s five parts. In the original text, the protagonist Willems is killed by his mistress the native girl Alssa when his wife Joanna suddenly arrives, whereas in the film Willems is merely banished to live in isolation. This weaker ending was probably a concession to the Hollywood Production Code which prevailed at the time for films shown in the USA. This was a set of moral guidelines (also known as the Hays Code) which specified what was and was not acceptable for on-screen viewing. These rules included forbidding the depiction of crimes that go unpunished.

Directed by Carol Reed, screenplay by William Fairchild, with music by Brian Easdale. Filmed in Sri Lanka and Shepperton Studios, London. Starring – Ralph Richardson (Captain Lingard), Trevor Howard (Peter Willems), Wendy Hiller (Mrs Almayer), Wilfred Hyde White (Mr Vinck), Kerima (Alssa). Filmed in Sri Lanka and Shepperton Studios, London.

An Outcast of the Islands – DVD film adaptation – Amazon UK

Details of the film – at Internet Movie Database

An Outcast of the Islands – a tutorial and study guide

An Outcast of the Islands – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

An Outcast of the Islands – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Amy Foster (story 1901 – film 1997)

This is one of Conrad’s long short stories – some might call it a novella – which was adapted in 1997 by (Baroness) Beeban Kidron as a feature film (originally re-named Swept from the Sea). It tells the story of a poor economic migrant from Eastern Europe who is the sole survivor of a shipwreck in the English Channel. He has lost everything, is hungry, wretched, and knows no English. The local inhabitants regard him as a madman, shun him, and throw stones at him. He is befriended by Amy Foster and settles down with her to create a family. But what appears to be a tale of positive redemption turns into a grim parable of a pessimistic or even tragic view of the world.

Director: Beeban Kidron. Screenplay: Tim Willocks.. Starring – Vincent Perez (Yanko Gooral), Ian McKellan (Dr James Kennedy), Kathy Bates (Mrs Swaffer), Rachel Weisz (Amy Foster), Joss Ackland (Mr Swaffer), and Zoe Wannamaker (Mary Foster). British/American, Tapson Steel Films and Phoenix Pictures. Filmed in Cornwall, UK.

Amy Foster – DVD film adaptation – Amazon UK

Details of the film – at Internet Movie Database

Amy Foster – a tutorial and study guide

Amy Foster – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Amy Foster – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Amy Foster – Kindle eBook (includes screenplay)

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Joseph Conrad biography

September 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

timeline of life, career, and literary works

1857. Joseph Conrad (full original name Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) born December 3 in Berdichev (or vicinity) to Apollo Nalecz Korzeniowski and Evelina (Ewa) Bobrowska. Poland at that time is under the control of Russia.

1862. Conrad’s father exiled to Russia because of his political liberalism, accompanied by his wife and son.

1865. Conrad’s mother dies. Conrad taken into care of maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski.

1869. Conrad and his father return to Cracow. Father dies. Conrad sporadically attends school in Cracow.

1873. Leaves for a three-month-long stay in Switzerland and northern Italy. Announces his wish to have a career at sea, which the family resists.

1874. Leaves Cracow for Marseilles to begin life as a sailor on French ships.

1875. Apprentice on the Mont-Blanc, bound for Martinique.

1876-77. From January to July in Marseilles; from July to February 1877 on schooner Saint-Antoine to West Indies.

1877. Acquires (with three other men) the tartane, the Tremolino which carries arms illegally to the supporters of Don Carlos, the Spanish pretender. Conrad probably escaping from gambling debts accrued in Monte Carlo.

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.

1878-79. Mounting financial problems. In February attempts suicide by shooting himself through the chest (which he later passed off as injury in a duel). Uncle Bobrowski pays off his debts and arranges for him to be transferred to England. On April 24 leaves Marseilles on British steamer Mavis. On June 18 sets foot in England at Lowestoft. Serves as ordinary seaman on coaster The Skimmer of the Sea.

1883. Passes mate’s examination on July 4. Meets uncle Bobrowski at Marienbad. Mate on the sailing ship Riversdale.

1884. Second mate on the Narcissus, bound from Bombay to Dunkirk.

1885-86. Second mate on the Tilkhurst; August 19, receives British certificate of naturalization. November 11, passes examination, receives his ‘Certificate of Competency as Master’. His first story, ‘The Black Mate’, submitted to Tit-Bits.

1887. First mate on Highland Forest. Hurt by a falling spar, hospitalized in Singapore (experience recalled in Lord Jim). Second mate on steamship Vidar (Singapore-Borneo).

1888. On Melita (bound for Bangkok), then his first command on the barque the Otago (Bangkok-Sydney-Mauritius-Port Adelaide). Experiences described in The Shadow-Line, Victory, The Secret Sharer. A Smile of Fortune, and other works.

1889. Summer in London; begins writing Almayer’s Folly.

1890. First trip to Poland since he left in 1874. In May he leaves for the Congo. Second in command, then in command of S. S. Roi de Belges.

1891-93. First mate on Torrens. English passenger (Jacques) reads the first nine chapters of Almayer’s Folly, offers encouragement; meets John Galsworthy aboard the ship. Visits uncle Bobrowski in Poland.

1893-94. Second mate on Adowa (London-Rouen-London). Ends his career as seaman on January 14.

1894. Uncle Bobrowski dies on January 29, 1894. In April Conrad sends Almayer’s Folly to T. Fisher Unwin.

1894-95. Writes An Outcast of the Islands.

The Complete Critical Guide to Joseph Conrad is a good introduction to Conrad criticism. It includes a potted biography, an outline of the stories and novels, and pointers towards the main critical writings – from the early comments by his contemporaries to critics of the present day. Also includes a thorough bibliography which covers biography, criticism in books and articles, plus pointers towards specialist Conrad journals. These guides are very popular. Recommended.

1896. March 24, marries Jessie George.

1897. Completes The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’; friendship with R. B. Cunninghame Graham.

1898. Son Alfred Borys born January 14. In October moves to Petit Farm, Kent.

1899. In February completes Heart of Darkness.

1900. Finishes Lord Jim.

1904. Nostromo. Writes the memoir The Mirror of the Sea. Wife falls ill, and becomes practically an invalid.

1905. Spends four months in Europe.

1906. Spends two months in France. Second son John Alexander born August 2.

1907. Children ill in France. Returns to Pent Farm in August. The Secret Agent.

1908. A Set of Six (short stories).

1910. In June moves to Capel House, Kent. Seriously ill.

1911. Under Western Eyes.

1912. ‘Twixt Land and Sea, Tales.

1913-14. Chance. Writes Victory. Leaves for Poland in July 1914; meets Stefan Zeromski in Zakopane; caught by the war in August; escapes and returns to Capel House November 3.

1915. Victory. Within the Tides.

1916. Borys fights on the French front.

1917. The Shadow-Line. Writes prefaces for a new collected edition of his works.

1918. Borys, gassed and wounded, is hospitalized in Le Havre.

1919. The Arrow of Gold. Moves to Oswalds, Bishopbourne, near Canterbury, where he spends the last years of his life.

1920. The Rescue.

1921. Visits Corsica. Notes on Life and Letters.

1923. Visits New York (April-June). Reading from his Victory at home of Mrs. Arthur Curtiss James, May 10. The Secret Agent, Drama in Four Acts (adaptation of the novel). The Rover. Laughing Anne, a play (adaptation of “Because of the Dollars”).

1924. Jacob Epstein does Conrad’s bust. In May Conrad declines knighthood. Health deteriorates and he is bedridden. His wife is also ill. Both sons and Richard Curle are with them. Dies of heart attack 3 August. Buried in Canterbury.

1925. Suspense (incomplete). Tales of Hearsay.

1926. Last Essays.

1928. The Sisters (written in 1896; incomplete.)

1936. Jessie Conrad dies 6 December. Buried near her husband at Canterbury.

Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
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Jane Austen greatest works

Jane Austen life and works

Jane Austen literary criticism

Jane Austen web links

a selection of web-based archives and resources

Jersey Villas

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Jersey Villas – critical commentary

Jersey Villas – study resources

Jersey Villas – plot summary

Jersey Villas – principal characters

Further reading

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

John Delavoy

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

John Delavoy – critical commentary

John Delavoy – study resources

John Delavoy – plot summary

Principal characters

Further reading

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

John Middleton Murry

poet, critic, pacifist, publisher

Jorge Luis Borges biography

essayist, librarian, master of the modern short story

Joseph Conrad and Cinema

film adaptations of Joseph Conrad’s novels and stories

Joseph Conrad biography

timeline of life, career, and literary works

Joseph Conrad links

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