THE TEXTS: AN ESSAY

Summary

THE BOOK PUBLISHED in 1912 as Some Reminiscences in England and as A Personal Record in America, and after that as the latter everywhere, first appeared in seven consecutive issues of the English Review. The series ran in the magazine's inaugural number of December 1908 through its June 1909 issue. During this period Conrad was also at times writing ‘Razumov’, later titled Under Western Eyes. Warming to a project about which he initially had doubts and which his literary agent, J. B. Pinker, feared would impede work on the novel, Conrad apparently wrote his memoirs fluently, with little time elapsing between writing, revision, and publication. Composition of the final three instalments during the spring of 1909 was, however, clouded by increasingly troubled relations with the monthly's editor, Conrad's friend and sometime collaborator, Ford Madox Ford. As Conrad experienced problems with his mental and physical health, his mood shifted. Writing to a deadline, never his strong suit, had become onerous, and pressures to get on with ‘Razumov’ continued to mount. Various factors led him to such a breaking-point that he peremptorily and somewhat angrily discontinued the series of recollections, simultaneously putting an end, for some time, to his relationship with Ford.