
Luke Batterham
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'DEATH YOU KNOW TAKES ALL THE VIRTUE OUT OF THE WORDS': a moving letter of consolation by Joseph Conrad to the man who discovered him – 'in 1894 Garnett [as editor at T. Fisher Unwin] accepted Joseph Conrad's first book, Almayer's Folly, and persuaded him not to go back to sea but to write another. Conrad, though eleven years his senior, nevertheless deferred to Garnett's authority; and Garnett's considerable influence on Conrad's work, which is revealed in Letters from Conrad (1928), is perhaps his greatest contribution to literature' (Richard D. C. Garnett, ODNB). Garnett was later to describe his impression of Conrad at this time: 'My memory is of seeing a dark-haired man, short but extremely graceful in his nervous gestures, with brilliant eyes, now narrowed and penetrating, now soft and warm, with a manner alert yet caressing, whose speech was ingratiating, guarded, and brusque turn by turn. I had never seen before a man so masculinely keen yet so femininely sensitive' (Letters from Conrad, p. vii). Conrad was then busy finishing Romance (1903), the not altogether successful novel he was writing with Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford). This fine letter is published in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, edited by Laurence Davies, et al., ix (2007), p. 93.