JOSEPH CONRAD A PERSONAL REMEMBRANCE BY FORD MADOX FORD ROMANCE", "For it would be delightful to catch the echo of the desperate, Copyright, 1924, BY FORD MADOX FORD. All rights reserved Published December, 1924, by arrangement with the Editor and Proprietors PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PREFACE Nine years ago the writer had occasion to make a hasty will. Since one of the provisions of this document appointed Conrad the writer's literary executor, we fell to discussing the question of literary biographies in general and our own in particular. We hit, as we generally did, very quickly upon a formula, both having a very great aversion to the usual official biography for men of letters whose lives are generally uneventful. But we agreed that should a writer's life have interests beyond the mere writing upon which he had employed himself, this life might well be the subject of a monograph. It should then be written by an artist and be a work of art. To write: "Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski was born on such a day of such a year in the town of 'So and So' in the Government of Kieff", and so to continue would not conduce to such a rendering as this great man desired. So, here, to the measure of the ability |