Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the texts
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction, or confession of a mastodon
- 2 Conrad's Polish background, or from biography to a study of culture
- 3 Joseph Conrad's parents
- 4 Joseph Conrad and Tadeusz Bobrowski
- 5 The Sisters: a grandiose failure
- 6 Lord Jim: a Romantic tragedy of honour
- 7 The Mirror of the Sea
- 8 A Personal Record
- 9 Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, or the melodrama of reality
- 10 Conrad, Russia and Dostoevsky
- 11 Conrad and Rousseau: concepts of man and society
- 12 Conrad and the idea of honour
- 13 Joseph Conrad: a European writer
- 14 Joseph Conrad after a century
- 15 Joseph Conrad in his historical perspective
- 16 Fidelity and art: Joseph Conrad's cultural heritage and literary programme
- Notes
- Index
8 - A Personal Record
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the texts
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction, or confession of a mastodon
- 2 Conrad's Polish background, or from biography to a study of culture
- 3 Joseph Conrad's parents
- 4 Joseph Conrad and Tadeusz Bobrowski
- 5 The Sisters: a grandiose failure
- 6 Lord Jim: a Romantic tragedy of honour
- 7 The Mirror of the Sea
- 8 A Personal Record
- 9 Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, or the melodrama of reality
- 10 Conrad, Russia and Dostoevsky
- 11 Conrad and Rousseau: concepts of man and society
- 12 Conrad and the idea of honour
- 13 Joseph Conrad: a European writer
- 14 Joseph Conrad after a century
- 15 Joseph Conrad in his historical perspective
- 16 Fidelity and art: Joseph Conrad's cultural heritage and literary programme
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In ‘A Familiar Preface’, which Conrad wrote to A Personal Record in the late summer of 1911, he says that ‘this little book is the result of a friendly suggestion’. Even if true, this certainly is not the whole nor the essential truth. While it is highly probable that Ford Madox Ford encouraged Conrad to write his autobiography (he was to produce several autobiographical books himself), it is also evident that Conrad had his own very strong reasons. And, ironically, what Ford wanted to publish in his English Review – the monthly he started in December 1908 – was not ‘this little book’, but a much longer text.
The earliest mention of the proj ect we find in Conrad's letter to James B. Pinker of 18 September 1908: ‘These are to be intimate personal autobiographical things under the general title (for book form perhaps) of the Life and the Art … they will be concerned with Polish life and life at sea, intimate thought and sensations.’ By that time, however, the first section had already been written, to appear in the opening issue of the English Review. Five weeks before that letter, on 10 August 1908, Robert Lynd – then a well-known critic – had published in the Daily News a review of Conrad's recent volume of short stories, A Set of Six. He attacked Conrad for not writing in his native language:
Mr Conrad, as everybody knows, is a Pole, who writes in English by choice, as it were, rather than by nature … To some of us … it seems a very regrettable thing, even from the point of view of English literature. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Conrad in PerspectiveEssays on Art and Fidelity, pp. 102 - 109Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997