Lord Jim

Description

Since its first appearance in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1899 and 1900, Lord Jim (1900) has been acclaimed as a modernist masterwork. Its narrative innovations and psychological complexity make it one of the most influential fictions written in the twentieth century and it has challenged and stimulated generations of readers as well as writers on and of fiction. This edition, established through modern textual scholarship, presents Conrad's novel and its preface in a form more authoritative than any so far printed. The Introduction situates the novel in Conrad's career and traces its sources and contemporary reception. The explanatory notes identify literary and historical references and real-life places and indicate Conrad's main influences. Glossaries, maps and illustrations are provided for further context, as well as a new transcription of 'Tuan Jim: A Sketch', a partial draft of the novel, and appearing in print for the first time, Conrad's contract for the book.

J. H. Stape is Research Fellow at St Mary's University College, Twickenham, London and has taught at universities in England, Canada, France and the Far East. Author of The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad (2007) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad (1996), he has edited several of Conrad's texts and is co-editor of Conrad's collected letters (Volumes 7 and 9). He has also published on E. M. Forster, William Golding, Thomas Hardy, Frank Harris, Angus Wilson and Virginia Woolf. Ernest W. Sullivan, II is Edward S. Diggs Endowed Chair in English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

"This edition is obviously the product of enormous time and effort, and the end product is well worth what went into producing it. In both the introduction and textual essay, the editors clearly delineate the origins of the novel, both the story itself and its journey into published form." -John Peters, English Literature in Transition 1880-1920