Joseph Conrad and the Imperial Romance - by L Dryden (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Linda Dryden places Almayer's Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, 'Karain', and Lord Jim in the context of the nineteenth-century imperial romance. Through the thwarted dreams and aspirations of his central characters she argues that Conrad exposes the empty promises of such fiction and challenges assumptions about the superiority of European imperialists and the imperial venture itself. Using illustrations from and references to many well-known novels of Empire, Dryden demonstrates how Conrad's Malay fiction alludes to the conventions and stereotypes of popular imperial fiction.

Review Quotes

'Dryden's detailed analyses make her study an accessible, thorough introduction to Conrad's early fiction.' - Victorian Studies

'Linda Dryden has proven herself a Conrad scholar of the first order, scrutinizing his early, and largely critically ignored, Malay quartet where it subverts...Read Joseph Conrad and the Imperial Romance. It's a refreshing, lucid, twenty-first century look at a solid branch of nineteenth-century lore.' - Eric Madeen, The East

About the Author

Linda Dryden is Lecturer in Cultural Studies in the Department of Print Media, Publishing, and Communication at Napier University, Edinburgh.