Companion to Conrad

ELT 41 : 2 1998 Of more concern is the fact that Harding's quotes from Craigie's works are sometimes inaccurate, and a nonexistent character inserted into the text of the synopsis. In the absence of a decent bibliography of Craigie, and knowing that the plates of her books passed through the hands of a number of cheap reprint houses after her death, though, one can wonder aloud where the fault for such lapses truly lies. Discounting the hyperbole of the book's promotional literature, it is doubtful that "the best of Hobbes's works deserve a permanent place in the history of English literature," but Harding's book will serve as a solid starting point from which to explore the question of Craigie's rightful niche in history. Surely no person who labored so long and so hard as Pearl Craigie deserves to be entirely forgotten. Harding's lifelong labor is worthy of our attention and respect, and if it is the verdict of posterity that Craigie's works deserve oblivion, the fault will not be with Harding. Her book must not be judged by the fate of its subject's reputation; it is a well-researched, well-constructed, and well-written telling of a timeless tale, a model of what such a work of literary homage and resurrection ought to be. In closing, the book is competently produced, solidly bound, and (no small matter) well-priced, if one considers the outrageous costs of university press productions these days. Clinton Krauss ________________ Montpelier, Vermont Companion to Conrad J. H. Stape, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xx + 258 pp. $54.95 THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION to Joseph Conrad brings together twelve essays on numerous aspects of Conrad's life and art by an international assemblage of recognized Conrad scholars. Major Conradians from Britain, Continental Europe, and America, including Jacques Berthoud, Cedric Watts, Keith Carabine, and the late Eliose Knapp Hay, are represented here, as are scholars new to the scene, such as Andrea White, whose significant work on Conrad is just being assimilated . J. H. Stape, the volume editor, has done a masterful job in choosing works of "informed appreciation based on an understanding of Conrad's cultural context and fictional techniques" that will benefit both newcomers to and seasoned scholars of this staple author of "university courses" and "the corner bookshop." This collection is particularly impressive for 220 BOOK REVIEWS shedding new light on its subject while also serving as the finest single introductory volume on Conrad presently available. Owen Knowles's overview of Conrad's life and career serves as the volume's introduction. There, as in other chapters of this collection, the contributor walks well-trod ground yet also stakes out new territory. Knowles offers a corrective to the image of Conrad as "Anglo-Polish" with the insight that "Polish, English, and French influences" made Conrad a "genuinely trilingual and tri-cultural identity." Knowles appropriately marvels at the fact that Conrad established himself as a master stylist and craftsman of fiction in what was his third or fourth language and that he only began writing when in his 30s. And he explains why Conrad, for familial as well as nationalistic reasons (as an orphaned Pole whose father suffered at the hands of Poland's Russian conquerors), found himself "suspended between revolutionary and conservative , chivalric and egalitarian, romantic and pragmatic traditions." Knowles insightfully relates Conrad's experience sailing the world on French and British merchant ships to the author's fictional complexity and broodingly philosophical disposition. And he rehearses the three stages that Conrad's fictional career is usually understood to have traversed and concludes that Conrad's life was built upon "the imputation of betrayal, linguistic dislocation, shifting cosmopolitan influences, and the consequent search for supporting social and intellectual traditions ." Cedric Watts, who has authored an entire monograph on Heart of Darkness alone, revisits this novella in a chapter. Observing that Conrad in this work combines "popular elements with highly sophisticated analysis," Watts argues that the novella proffers a series of startling paradoxes: Civilization can be barbaric. It is both a hypocritical veneer and a valuable achievement to be vigilantly...