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  • Conrad & Memoir
  • John G. Peters
Joseph Conrad. A Personal Record. Zdzisław Najder and J. H. Stape, eds. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xlix + 233 pp. $150.00

As has been true of all of the volumes in Cambridge University Press’s Cambridge Edition of the Works of Joseph Conrad, Najder and Stape’s A Personal Record represents the definitive edition of this work. It gets closer to Conrad’s original text by eliminating the various emendations introduced by the various editors and publishing houses through which this work passed.

In addition to the text of A Personal Record itself, the editors include Conrad’s “Familiar Preface” and “Author’s Note,” both written sometime after the volume had been completed. Along with these primary texts, the editors include an extended introduction, textual essay, apparatus, extensive line notes, various illustrations and maps, as well as an appendix containing extracts from the memoir of Conrad’s uncle Tadeuz Bobrowski, which served as an important source for parts of A Personal Record. In the lengthy and useful introduction to this volume, Najder and Stape discuss the origins of A Personal Record, which began as an attempt by Conrad to dispel myths surrounding his background and to bring in some money. The editors do an excellent job revealing the pressures surrounding Conrad’s writing of this memoir and laying out the way it evolved into something in which he took a great deal of interest. Najder and Stape also take up the question of whether Conrad intended to expand the volume; they make a convincing argument that initially he did indeed plan to do so but in the end decided that the volume was complete as is, although as they note Conrad did consider writing another volume of memoirs to supplement A Personal Record. The editors also consider the various sources, influences, and structure of this memoir, and they conclude by discussing the volume’s critical [End Page 339] reception when it first appeared and subsequently. The textual essay accompanying this volume presents the thinking behind their choice of copy text for A Personal Record, “A Familiar Preface,” and the “Author’s Note.” In each case, the editors make a convincing case for their choice of copy text and their emendations to that text. The notes to this volume, as has come to be expected, are both useful and extensive.

In short, Najder and Stape have done first-rate work with this edition and have given a far more complete picture of the history and significance of this volume of memoirs than had been available to this point. In fact, the introduction, textual essay, and notes alone make this volume worth owning. There is a wealth of information here that will be of use to Conrad scholars, not only for those studying Conrad’s memoirs but for those studying many of Conrad’s other works. As with any edition of a literary work, however, what will be of most value is the text itself, as students and scholars will have available to them a definitive edition of this work of Joseph Conrad.

John G. Peters
University of North Texas
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