Beschreibung:

Conrad, Jessie SERIES OF 93 LETTERS TO GRANT RICHARDS RELATING TO HER BOOK JOSEPH CONRAD AND HIS CIRCLE, comprising 55 autograph letters signed, 36 typed letters signed, 1 autograph postcard signed, 1 brief autograph note signed, also one typed letter signed to W.W. Lawrence, 6 telegrams to Richards, 6 readers reports, 4 other letters, a photograph of Jessie Conrad, and newspaper cuttings, the letters discussing Richard's suggestion that she write a fresh memoir, the continued interest in Conrad and his writing, the composition and revision of the book, its production, her advance, her intense dislike of Ford Madox Ford, and her growing frustrations at delay in publication and royalties culminating in her decision to send her manuscript to another publisher and return her advance, about 200 pages, various sizes, mostly "Torrens", Mill Lane, Harbledown, Canterbury, 8 March 1931 to 23 April 1935 Grant Richards (1872-1948) had been a highly innovative publisher and was founder of the Richards Press, but by the 1930s he was increasingly disengaged from publishing. He commissioned Jessie Conrad's second memoir of her husband some five years after the publication of Joseph Conrad as I Knew Him (1926) but was evidently dissatisfied with her manuscript. Joseph Conrad and his Circle was finally published by Jarrolds in 1935. Jessie [Emmeline] Conrad, neé George was the novelist's wife, sixteen years his junior, the second-born of nine children in a lower middle-class Peckham family. According to the novelist the two first met in 1894 when she was working as a typist for the Calligraph Company and living with her widowed mother. Although both of Catholic upbringing a sudden proposal of marriage on the steps of the National Gallery was followed by a registry office wedding soon after on 24 March 1896. Around the same time Conrad described Jessie as a “small, not at all striking-looking person (to tell the truth alas – rather plain!) who nevertheless is very dear to me” (Collected Letters, I., p.265). The couple had two children: Borys, born in 1898, and John, in 1906. Jessie took her role as literary wife very seriously, typing up her husband's manuscripts, as well as being a devoted home-maker and cook. Knowles and Moore note that the author's “volatile moods, hypochondria, and extreme nervous anxiety often required her to take the role of protective mother” (p.86). After 1917 Jessie suffered increased leg trouble of a result of a knee dislocated in childhood, undergoing many operations, and becoming increasingly stout and immobile. Contemporary impressions of Jessie are varied, but some are perhaps unfairly unflattering. That she was completely devoted to her husband seems unquestionable, though even the Conrads' son Borys suggested that her “unassailable placidity” could be “almost frightening at times” (My Father: Joseph Conrad, 12, 18). This impassivity and stolidity may be reflected in two of Conrad's characters: the unresponsive Amy in “Amy Foster” (Typhoon) and Winnie Verloc in The Secret Agent. After her husband's death in 1924 Jessie found herself neglected by all but a few of Conrad's admirers, but defended his reputation in print while also selling his manuscripts to support her gambling habit. She wrote two intimate, but rather unreliable memoirs, Joseph Conrad as I Knew Him (1926) and Joseph Conrad and his Circle (1935). Edward Garnett reacted angrily to the second of these, accusing her of belittling her late husband's achievement and betraying his trust. Conrad dedicated Youth and Romance to Jessie.