Cambridge Introductions: Conrad & Joyce.(The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad, The Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce)(Book review)

Publication: English Literature in Transition 1880-1920

Publication Date: 01-JAN-08

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John G. Peters. The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 146 pp. Paper $19.95

Eric Bulson. The Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 139 pp. Paper $19.95

THE GOAL of the new Cambridge Introductions to Literature series is to introduce students to "key topics and authors" in a concise format via "accessible and lively" prose. John G. Peters's volume on Joseph Conrad and Eric Bulson's volume on James Joyce handily achieve this ambition. At once comprehensive and breezily written, these volumes will prove especially useful to newcomers to the authors and to first-time high school and college teachers of these figures who are looking for ways to select and organize relevant course material. Each volume explores its subject's life, intellectual and artistic contexts, works, and reception, and then concludes with a list of recommended "further reading." Each provides a balanced and accessible overview of the fiction in question, and of this fiction's importance to readers today.

John Peters's volume offers a useful synthesis of what has been thought and said of Conrad to date. His chapter overview of Conrad's biography is balanced and judicious; it provides an excellent quick fix on the trajectory of the author's life and career. Peters's chapter on Conrad's context, which is divided into four sections, is equally useful and insightful. In the...

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