Foreword, by Andrew N. Rubin Preface List of Abbreviations Part One: Conrad's Letters I. The Claims of Individuality II. Character and the Knitting Machine, 1896-1912 III. The Claims of Fiction, 1896-1912 IV. Worlds at War, 1912-1918 V. The New Order, 1918-1924 Part Two: Conrad's Shorter Fiction VI. The Past and the Present VII. The Craft of the Present VIII. Truth, Idea, and Image IX. The Shadow Line Chronology, 1889-1924 Letter to R. B. Cunninghame Graham, February 8, 1899 Selected Bibliography Notes Index

"Said concentrates on what we may call Conrad's 'house of consciousness'- how that great mind perceived, what its internal complexities and contradictions were, how it turned the shapeless sufferings of the life into the containing constructs of art." -- The Spectator

Critical monographs generally have a brief life. But once in a while a book appears that establishes itself as a lasting presence. Edward W. Said's Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography is such a preeminent exception. When it was published in 1966, Said's work was recognized as a significant event in Conrad studies. Rejecting the 'purism' of the then-dominant New Criticism, Said opted for a richer, more holistic way of reading Conrad, relating his correspondence to his short fiction to investigate the way in which the novelist 'ordered the chaos of his existence into a highly patterned art.' Said's Conrad joined the handful of monographs still regularly cited by Conradian scholars. The book also represented a major step on the intellectual path of a writer whose reflections influenced the landscape of late twentieth-century thought. Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography is a must for anyone seriously interested in Modernist writing, in Conrad--the first global novelist--and in Edward W. Said. -- Tony Tanner The Spectator