Cambridge University Press Inheritors and The Nature of a Crime

"In conversations of any length one of the parties assumes the superiority - superiority of rank, intellectual or social. In this conversation she, if she did not attain to tacitly acknowledged temperamental superiority, seemed at least to claim it, to have no doubt as to its ultimate according. I was unused to this. I was a talker, proud of my conversational powers. I had looked at her before; now I cast a sideways, critical glance at her. I came out of my moodiness to wonder what type this was. She hadgood hair, good eyes, and some charm. Yes. And something besides - a something - a something that was not an attribute of her beauty. The modelling of her face was so perfect and so delicate as to produce an effect of transparency, yet there was no suggestion of frailness; her glance had an extraordinary strength of life. Her hair was fair and gleaming, her cheeks coloured as if a warm light had fallen on them from somewhere. She was familiar till it occurred to you that she was strange"-- This volume offers scholars the first authoritative text of two works produced collaboratively by two of the most important modern British novelists. Long hard to obtain and frequently neglected by critics, each can now be appreciated both in its own right and as part of the two authors' individual oeuvres. This scholarly edition situates both works in the context of the writers' meeting and ongoing collaboration, providing illuminating literary and historical references and detailing the works' composition history and reception in the UK and America. As well as establishing definitive texts of both works and of the authors' prefaces written for the 1924 republication of The Nature of a Crime, this edition also includes Ford's own 1924 account of his collaboration with Conrad on The Inheritors, as well as the text of Ford's 'The Old Story', a hitherto unpublished early draft of the basic plot of The Nature of a Crime. This volume offers scholars the first authoritative text of two works produced collaboratively by two of the most important modern British novelists. Long hard to obtain and frequently neglected by critics, each can now be appreciated both in its own right and as part of the two authors' individual oeuvres. Autorid: Joseph Conrad, Jeremy Hawthorn, Max Saunders