Description
CONRAD’S MASTERPIECE: RARE AND EXCEPTIONAL FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE, PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY, OF CONRAD’S YOUTH, CONTAINING THE FIRST BOOK APPEARANCE OF HEART OF DARKNESS, INSCRIBED BY JOSEPH CONRAD IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION TO AN EARLY CHAMPION OF CONRAD’S WRITING AND A FAITHFUL CORRESPONDENT TOWARD THE END OF CONRAD’S LIFE, ACCLAIMED BRITISH AUTHOR ENOCH ARNOLD BENNETT
CONRAD, Joseph. Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1902. Octavo, original green cloth. Housed in a custom cloth chemise and half morocco clamshell box.
Rare first edition, first issue, presentation copy, containing the first appearance in book form of Heart of Darkness—“one of the most powerful short novels in the English language” (Farrow, 14), scarce in original cloth, inscribed by Conrad in the year of publication to one of the earliest champions of Conrad’s writing and a frequent correspondent toward the end of Conrad’s life, author Enoch Arnold Bennett: “To E.A. Bennett cordially from Jos Conrad. 20th Nov. 1902.”
“Youth” and “Heart of Darkness” were the first of Conrad’s stories to attract wider attention. Conrad’s “account of a superman running an ivory business in the heart of the Congo… is a masterpiece of sinister deterioration” (Connolly, Modern Movement 14). “A vast body of critical commentary has mined the dense richness and consciously paradoxical quality of this seminal modernist work, with its modern version of a Dantean journey into the Inferno, its Faustian figure of Kurtz provoking ambivalently fascinated horror… The influence of Heart of Darkness can be traced in writers as diverse as T.S. Eliot, Andre Gide, H.G. Wells, [Chinua] Achebe, William Golding, Graham Greene, V.S. Naipaul, and George Steiner, while Francis Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now taps some of its rich imaginative possibilities by transposing it to the Vietnam War” (Stringer, 292). Also containing Conrad’s story “The End of the Tether.” First issue, with 32 pages of publisher’s advertisements dated “10/02.” Wise 10. Cagle A7. This rare presentation copy is inscribed from Joseph Conrad to Enoch Arnold Bennett. Bennett was a talented novelist and dramatist who was already quite well-known at the point when Conrad was still struggling to achieve success. “At his very best… Bennett was a highly scrupulous artist and a profoundly wise and resolute truth-teller. No novelist of his day had a greater, or perhaps an equal, integrity… Bennett, for all his versatility, his brilliance, and his position between 1914 and 1930 as an adored English figure, will live as long as English novels are read” (DNB). Despite his relative fame, Bennett was—by far—one of the earliest champions of Conrad’s work. Indeed, this inscription is dated 1902 when Conrad did not achieve true fame until the publication of Chance in 1914. Conrad, in turn, had read several of Bennett’s novels. Yet, oddly, the two only began a significant exchange of letters toward the end of Conrad’s life, just as Conrad had finally gained the critical acclaim he had sought for so long. Before then, they had only written sporadically, exchanging letters on mutual friends, writing, and other everyday subjects. the body of correspondence they produced revealed a great deal about the life for two of Britain’s most important 20th-century writers. This presentation copy of Youth marks the early period of Conrad and Bennett’s compelling friendship. According to G. Jean-Aubry, Life and Letters of Joseph Conrad (1927), Bennett had presented Conrad with a copy of Anna of the Five Towns on September 11, 1902. On November 6, Conrad wrote to Bennett, “I shall send a volume of my own when it appears.” This is that volume. This is also the copy of acclaimed 20th-century literature collector Jane Engelhard. Owner booklabel. Bookseller ticket.
Interior generally quite lovely, only faintest soiling to cloth, mild rubbing and toning to extremities. A near-fine presentation copy with a most exceptional association and distinguished provenance.
