Modernism's outsider status could not keep it from influencing thought in a wide range of disciplines. Fictions including ‘Heart of Darkness’ and Lady Chatterley's Lover long have served as points of reference in debate on topics ranging from the politics of empire to the history of sexuality. According to many early twentieth-century writers, exile from the mainstream was precisely what made literature of lasting impact possible. ‘The advantages incident to this removal are many’, Wyndham Lewis commented in 1927. ‘ … being in solitary schism, with no obligations at the moment towards party or individual colleague, I can resume my opinion of the society I have just left, and its characteristics which else might remain without serious unpartisan criticism’ (23–4). Scholars have often reiterated this appraisal. Edward Said, for instance, contends that the detachment maintained by Joseph Conrad facilitated both the form and content of his novels: ‘Never the wholly incorporated and fully acculturated Englishman, Conrad therefore preserved an ironic distance in each of his works’ (Culture and Imperialism 25). Remaining aloof from English culture enabled terse questioning of British imperialism, while Conrad's legendary irony permitted ‘readers to imagine something other than an Africa carved up into dozens of European colonies, even if, for his own part, he had little notion of what that Africa might be’ (Culture and Imperialism 26).