Joseph Conrad Collection

The Joseph Conrad Collection contains writings, correspondence, and other material by or relating to Joseph Conrad. The first group of material, bound or housed in slipcases, consists chiefly of drafts of writings by Conrad and autograph letters, signed, from Conrad to others. Most of the bindings and cases appear to have been made for the collector George T. Keating, who donated his Conrad collection to the Yale University Library in 1938. The writings in this group include autograph manuscript and typescript drafts to numerous shorter works and sections, such as "Author's Notes" and chapters of longer works. However, there are also substantial drafts, typescript, corrected, of The Arrow of Gold (1919), Nostromo (1904), and other titles. Bound correspondence features volumes of letters to Conrad's wife, and his friend, translator, and biographer, G. Jean-Aubry.

Other "loose" papers are subdivided into four groups: writings, correspondence, papers relating to Conrad, and photographs. Writings here include drafts of shorter works and sections to longer works, several French language translations, and the original autograph manuscript, corrected, of Conrad's novel, The Heart of Darkness (1899). There are separate, alphabetized runs of outgoing and incoming correspondence, with many files for English literary figures, including authors, critics, editors, and publishers, dating into the first three decades of the twentieth century. Correspondents include Arnold Bennett, Muirhead Bone, Ford Madox Ford, John Galsworthy, Edward Garnett, G. Jean-Aubry, Archibald Marshall, Humphrey Sumner Milford, Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Frank Swinnerton, and Hugh Walpole, among others.

The papers relating to Conrad consist chiefly of third-party correspondence and writings by others on or about Conrad. The largest file relates to G. Jean-Aubry and his work on Conrad. These materials include translations of writings by Conrad, biographical and bibliographical information relating to Conrad, correspondence, and printed and other material, such as clippings and ephemera. There are also many third-party letters from others to Jean-Aubry.

Typed transcriptions can be found in the collection for some writings and correspondence. When there are only transcriptions present in a file, this fact is noted (e.g. "copy") in the file-level description.