Conrad Lettters: Volume 7

ELT 49 : 4 2006 King gives an excellent background to the Irish Land War. In particular , she draws attention to Moore's contradictory feelings about the tenantry and the equal ferocity with which he portrays both tenants and landlords. She also highlights a very important aspect of the book: the fact that many of the portraits within it were based on historical figures, often from Moore's own family. The introduction also discusses contemporary reactions to the book. The notes are good at bringing out the close textual and thematic links between Parnell and His Island and A Drama in Muslin. King briefly mentions the importance of painting in the book, a theme that has not received much attention in scholarship on Parnell and His Island, but is a fascinating one. This is an excellent edition that will be invaluable to Moore scholars and historians of the Irish Land War. BRENDAN FLEMING ________________ Headington, England Conrad Lettters: Volume 7 The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad. Volume 7,1920-1922. Laurence Davies and John H. Stape, eds. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2005. lxi + 656 pp. $160.00 THE LATEST VOLUME of the Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad presents an interesting picture of Conrad's life at the beginning of the twenties. During these three years Conrad struggled not only with the health of his family but also with health of his bank balance and his creative faculties, as the letters here attest. Moreover these letters are not simply of interest to the Conrad scholar but also shed light on the international publishing industry of the time. The letters of this period are dominated, as they had been for some time previous, by the ill health of Conrad's wife, Jessie. In particular a recurrent problem with her knee kept her in bed for much of 1920 and restricted her mobility throughout the following two years. During this time Jessie was submitted to repeated invasive surgery and treatments whose success was only ever limited. The anxiety this caused Conrad is evident from his frequent discussion of her ailment in the letters and from his desperate optimism after each bout of surgery that her state will improve comprehensively. Conrad's anxiety was worsened in this respect whenever he himself was under the weather, as was often the case. Thus after a severe attack of gout he wrote to Hugh Walpole: "I have been in great pain and, what is worse, in the depth of dumps. Have dumps any depth? Anyway the impression was a most horrible nightmare—unable to think, afraid to move and only able to 452 BOOK REVIEWS worry" (14 June 1920). Not only did Jessie's disability cause Conrad anxiety in itself but it also contributed to the precarious nature of his finances. Consultations in London and Liverpool with Sir R. A. Jones, a leading orthopaedic surgeon in the U.K., entailed considerable financial outlay as did the employment of a nurse who attended to Jessie even when they went on holiday to Corsica in 1921. Besides Jessie's illness Conrad's financial problems were a common theme to his letters at this time. For although large Conrad's income was as unpredictable as his expenditure. He was one of the first writers to make considerable profit from the sale of manuscript material in his own lifetime. Originally patronised by John Quinn, in later life Conrad sold the majority of his material to Thomas J. Wise, a London collector and Conrad's first bibliographer. Conrad's regular business correspondence with Wise during this period indicates the extent to which he relied upon Wise's custom not only for the purchase of manuscript material but also for arranging private print runs of pamphlets from which Conrad was able to claim royalties. However, Wise could only buy if Conrad could produce and since Conrad's compositional practice was, as always, erratic so too was the income generated from the sale of manuscripts. Additional income came from selling film and theatre options. Having signed a lucrative deal with Famous Players-Lasky Co. in 1919 for rights to Romance, Lord Jim, Chance, and Victory Conrad pursued the sale of options on his newly...