Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Reviewed by: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Cedric T. Watts (bio) Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness. 2nd ed. Edited by John G. Peters. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2019. 231 pp. ISBN: 9781554813513. Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness. 3rd ed. Edited by D. C. R. A. Goonetilleke. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2020. 343 pp. ISBN: 9781554815531. The first Broadview edition of Heart of Darkness appeared in 1995. That was edited by Professor D. C. R. A. Goonetilleke and had 245 pages. The second edition, edited by Professor John G. Peters, appeared in 2019, and was somewhat [End Page 123] shorter. The third, edited by Goonetilleke again, appeared in 2020, and was markedly longer. Broadview currently offers for sale two editions of Heart of Darkness, the 2019 and the 2020 versions, but Heart of Darkness is such a rich and fruitful text that apparent duplication leads to real diversification. I recall that when I edited the novella for Oxford University Press, the base text, specified by the publisher, was the Heinemann 1921 version, but when I edited it for Everyman Dent Orion, I had a free choice of base text, and chose the 1899 serial, which offers a more melodramatic narrative and indicates that the characterization of Kurtz was influenced by Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The Broadview editions of classic works are characterized by diligent editing and the provision of a wealth of critical and historical contextual material, and both Peters and Goonetilleke have served the reader well. The base text used by Peters is the first British book edition, Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories, Blackwood, 1902. The base text used by Goonetilleke is the 1921 Heinemann edition of the Collected Works. Both editors have emended the text after consulting the manuscript, typescripts, and the British serial version of the story in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Goonetilleke says that he has “to some extent” modernized the spelling and punctuation. As he observes, between the two volumes “the textual differences are relatively minor.” Among the emendations listed by Peters, the more interesting include these: “shiny” (65) replacing “slimy,” “uncongenial strangeness” (69) replacing “uncongenial surroundings,” and “back to dodge a glinting” (106) replacing “back to a glinting.” Goonetilleke has the same emendations. The Cambridge University Press version of Youth, Heart of Darkness, The End of the Tether (2010), edited by Owen Knowles, contained more textual variants. For example, Knowles had “so sociable” (67), “nervously was switching” (76), and “I said nodding” (84), where Peters and Goonetilleke have “sociable,” “was switching” and “I said.” On the other hand, Knowles (like other editors in the Cambridge series) omitted too much of the punctuation which Conrad had accepted at the proof stages. To take just one of many possible examples, Knowles had: Can’t say I saw any road or any up-keep unless the body of a middle-aged negro with a bullet-hole in the forehead upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles further on may be considered as a permanent improvement. Peters and Goonetilleke offer the better modulated and more grammatical version: [End Page 124] Can’t say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement. After seeing the damage repeatedly inflicted on Conrad’s prose by the Cambridge edition, it is a relief to turn to the texts provided by Peters and Goonetilleke. As is characteristic of Broadview editions, both volumes contain a plenitude of contextual materials. Peters concentrates on material highlighting “both Conrad’s journey into the Congo and the historical pressures on the Congo in 1890.” Goonetilleke’s material ranges much more widely in time, “to provide the reader with a fuller sense of the development of (and the protests against) imperialism—British imperialism as well as Léopold II’s brand.” Goonetilleke also gives samples of various source-materials for Heart of Darkness. Peters’s twenty-two page introduction is lucidly informative, providing biographical and critical material, and adjudicating well the various controversies about the novella. His judgment is generally thoughtful, balanced, and persuasive. His excellent discussion...

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