THE GROWTH OF CONRAD'S 'NOSTROMO': A GENETIC APPARATUS FOR PART III (TEXTUAL, EDITION, BIBLIOGRAPHY)

Joseph Conrad's Nostromo has been regarded as one of the great English novels of this century, yet its textual history has never been reconstructed. Only a few textual studies of Nostromo have appeared, and these have been either very general or fragmented in their approach. It has been difficult to give Nostromo its due because of its length and because the leaves of the early states of the novel have been geographically scattered across the United States.;The genetic apparatus for Part III of Nostromo, the principal focus of this study, contains approximately 10,500 entries. These entries record the variants among the manuscript, typescripts, serialization, and the first British edition of the novel. The apparatus also describes the material means by which changes were effected so a reader is afforded a view of the text's development from over the author's shoulder.;This dissertation should help lead the way to a clearer understanding and more profound appreciation of Joseph Conrad at work; it can also lay some of the groundwork for the establishment of a critical text of Nostromo.;This dissertation attempts to remedy this neglect by providing bibliographical descriptions of the manusript and typescript leaves held by the Philip H. and A. S. W. Rosenbach Foundation, Philadelphia, by the Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and by the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino. The descriptions of the over 1200 manuscript and typescript leaves inscribed with text of Nostromo help identify the relations among the extant leaves and show that each library's holdings cannot be considered discrete documents, but rather represent various stages of the novel's development instead of one. The descriptions also provide a system by which scholars can identify and refer to individual leaves of the manuscript and typescript leaves no matter where these leaves may be housed. Furthermore, this identification system should also work for manuscript or typescript leaves now thought lost.