The Burden of Isolation

In this age of canon reformation, Joseph Conrad’s readership, at least as evidenced by the relative infrequency with which his major novels turn up on school and university course syllabi, is smaller than it once was. It has been a long time since F.R. Leavis confidently charted for the English novel a great tradition that began with Jane Austen and passed through George Eliot, Henry James and Conrad en route to D.H. Lawrence. With the exception of Austen, these weighty names now seem more honoured in the invocation than in the actual reading, even among students enrolled in English literature programs. Conrad in particular has two strikes against him on the critical fashion front. Because of a subject matter often rooted in his early experience as a voyager to exotic and dangerous parts, he has the reputation of being a writer who appeals primarily to men. And the work of his that, courtesy of its relative shortness, does still turn up on many English courses (with such...