INTRODUCTION
Most of the contents of this volume were written subsequent to the publication of “Notes on Life and Letters” in 1921, and these two books together may be said to contain practically all Conrad’s miscellaneous writings. There are, it is true, a few short prefaces and some interesting letters to newspapers which might have been included here, but they are of no particular importance, and the twenty separate pieces gathered between these covers are indeed the last essays of Joseph Conrad. But there remains a chance that some of his early essays and reviews may still rest undiscovered in the files of old newspapers and weeklies. Conrad had a very uncertain memory for his own work, and I recall that when the material for “Notes on Life and Letters” was being collected, he was frequently quite vague as to what he had written and where it had appeared. In proof of this, it may be mentioned that the essay entitled “John Galsworthy’ in this volume was omitted from the previous one only through Conrad’s forgetfulness of its existence. Therefore, as I say, discoveries may yet be made.
In the latter years of his life Conrad occasionally found relief from the toil and exhaustion of more creative work in the writing of reminiscent essays, and some of these rank, decidedly, among his finest efforts in this direction. “Last Essays” is just as remarkable a book as “Notes on Life and Letters”; it contains passages of extraordinary charm, serenity, and eloquence. And
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