The Writer at Work: Hand-Drawn Maps in Conrad's Manuscripts

Why are there symbolic depictions of space from above—maps of the fictional environment—in many of Conrad's manuscripts? Reproducing Conrad's unpublished map-like doodles in Victory (1915), Almayer's Folly (1895), Nostromo (1904), An Outcast of the Islands (1896), and for the play of Laughing Anne (1924), I suggest that Conrad used and constructed hand-drawn maps as part of his creative writing process, as if he needed a map to navigate his own fictional world. Indeed, these maps share certain qualities with the twelve navigational maps in Conrad's "Up-river Book," one of which is reproduced here for the first time. Three of Conrad's manuscript maps are linked to passages in his fiction that contain factual mistakes; it is unclear whether the maps led him astray or whether he produced the maps given an awareness of the complicated geography. A few of the doodled maps were produced after the text, while other maps likely served as visual drafts or predetermined plans to be translated by the author into verbal form. The maps' existence can be attributed to more than attempts at understanding the coordinates of the fictional environment. Among twentieth-century writers, Conrad was one of the artists most involved with maps and charts, both in his literary and professional life. However, although Conrad needed maps to write, it is not apparent that we need them to read—unless we seek to better understand the genealogy of the text and the creative process.