Under Western Eyes

Description

Set in the tumultuous political world of Tsarist repression and revolutionary intrigue in St Petersburg and Geneva, Under Western Eyes (1911) renders with searing intensity the psychological torment of its Russian protagonist, a university student who, in betraying another, has betrayed himself. Based upon a comparison of the existing manuscript and other materials, this scholarly and first extensively annotated edition of Joseph Conrad's great novel Under Western Eyes differs from all previous printings by more accurately reflecting Conrad's writing process. The reading text is supported by new scholarly materials that are the result of fifteen years of investigation: essays on the textual and biographical history of the novel, extensive notes, appendices and maps, as well as a full listing of the thousands of textual variants in the early forms of the novel, including the 18,000 words that Conrad himself deleted.

Roger Osborne is a researcher at the University of Queensland where he has managed the Australian Electronic Scholarly Editing Project and the Aus-e-Lit Project. His doctoral thesis (2001) at the University of New South Wales, Canberra included an edition of the Under Western Eyes typescript. He has published widely on the transnational history of Australian literature and written on Conrad. Paul Eggert, an Australian Research Council professorial fellow, is based at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. He has been an editor for the Cambridge Edition of D. H. Lawrence, prepared scholarly editions of Henry Kingsley, Rolf Boldrewood and Henry Lawson and was general editor of the Academy Editions of Australian Literature. Keith Carabine, Senior Honorary Research Fellow, University of Kent at Canterbury, and Chair of the Joseph Conrad Society (UK), is the author of The Life and Art: A Study of Conrad's 'Under Western Eyes' (1996) and the literary editor of Wordsworth Classics. He has also written on Sherwood Anderson, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Wright Morris and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Jeremy Hawthorn, Professor of English at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, has published widely on Conrad as well as editing Conrad titles for Oxford World's Classics. His work includes Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad (2007) and co-editing 'Under Western Eyes': Centennial Essays (2011). He has also published on New Historicism, Marxist theory and the contemporary critical debate.

'There are punctilious descriptions of parts of the narrative, especially the unique provenance of single sheets (including descriptions of the handwritings on several separate sheets). This extraordinary exhaustiveness, while not unusual in the Conrad industry, distinguishes this Edition of Under Western Eyes and assures us that extreme care has been being devoted to details of this challenging artifact ... this Edition of Under Western Eyes is a triumph of the textual editor's heart.' Dale Kramer, Joseph Conrad Today