Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 18880

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'I had a treat in the shape of a number of the "Singapore Free Press" 2 and a half columns about "Mr Conrad at home and abroad". extremely laudatory but in fact telling me I don't know anything about it. Well I never did set up as an authority on Malaysia.I looked for a medium in which to express myself. I am inexact and ignorant no doubt (most of us are) but I don't think I sinned so recklessly. Curiously enough all the details about the little characteristic acts and customs which they hold up as proof I have taken out (to be safe) from undoubted sources--dull,wise books.'
Century: 1850-1899
Date: Between 1 Oct 1898 and 13 Dec 1898
Country: England
Time: n/a
Place: city: Stanford near Hythe
county: Kent
specific address: Pent Farm
   
Type of Experience (Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
Type of Experience (Listener):
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Reader/Listener/Reading Group:

Reader:Joseph Conrad
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 3 Dec 1857
Socio-economic group: Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation: Master mariner and author
Religion: originally Polish Catholic, by now agnostic/atheist
Country of origin: Poland
Country of experience: England
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Hugh Clifford
Title: Article in Singapore Free Press
Genre: Essays / Criticism, Ephemera
Form of Text: Print: Newspaper
Publication details: Singapore, 1st September 1898
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 18880  
Source - Print  
  Author: Joseph Conrad
  Editor: Frederick R. Karl (and Laurence Davies)
  Title: The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad Volume 2, 1898-1902
  Place of Publication: Cambridge
  Date of Publication: 1986
  Vol: 2
  Page: 130
  Additional comments: Letter from Joseph Conrad to William Blackwood 13th December 1898, Pent Farm, Kent

Citation: Joseph Conrad, Frederick R. Karl (and Laurence Davies) (ed.), The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad Volume 2, 1898-1902 (Cambridge, 1986), 2, p. 130, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=18880, accessed: 28 March 2024

Additional comments:

According to fn.2 p.130 of source text, Conrad was not aware at the time that article was by Hugh Clifford whose book "Studies in Brown Humanity" he had read and reviewed for the "Academy" (see letter to C.L.Hind 16th April 1898 p.57 of source text). Norman Sherry in "Conrad's Eastern World" (1971) devotes a whole chapter (pp.139-170) to the 'dull wise books' that he read as background for his South East Asia stories.

 

 

Reading Experience Database version 2.0.  Page updated: 27th Apr 2016  3:15pm (GMT)