Conrad's Popular Fictions: Secret Histories and Sensational Novels

by Andrew Glazzard

Overview

Detectives, police informers, spies and spymasters, anarchists and terrorists, swindlers: these are the character types explored in Conrad's Popular Fictions. This book shows how Joseph Conrad experimented creatively with genres such as crime and espionage fiction, and sheds new light on the sources and contexts of his work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137559166
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/14/2014
Edition description:	1st ed. 2016
Pages:	227
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.02(d)

About the Author

Andrew Glazzard is a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a visiting lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. As well as writing on Conrad, he has written on Arnold Bennett, Arthur Conan Doyle, and H.G. Wells.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction: The All-Powerful Masses and the Limited Coterie: Conrad and Problems of Popularity
1. 'Armed with the defensive mandate of a menaced society': Detectives, Professionalism, and Liberty in The Secret Agent
2. 'An actor in desperate earnest': Informers and Secret Agency
3. 'The inciter behind': Spymasters and the Eastern Logic of Russia
4. 'The cowardly bomb-throwing brutes': The Many Types of Conrad's 'Terrorists'
5. 'The Perpetrator of the Most Heartless Frauds': Swindlers, the New Economy, and the Limits of Narrative
6. Conclusion: Cooking the Books
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Glazzard examines themes such as espionage, diplomacy, investigation, and terrorism in Conrad’s work, tracing them back to popular contemporary texts … . A substantial work using an innovative approach, Conrad’s Popular Fictions could potentially serve as a reference point for future research on some of Conrad’s less frequently discussed writings. It is also recommended for those who are interested in turn-of-the-century English literature, culture,and the period’s sociological background.” (József Szabolcs Fagyal, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, Vol. 24 (1), 2018)

From the Publisher