His American editions tell an even stranger story. The
first six of them were brought out by six different publishers; the
first eight by no less than seven. But today he has a regular American
publisher at last, and in England a complete edition of his works is in
progress.
Thanks to the indefatigable efforts of that American publisher (who
labours for Gene Stratton-Porter and Gerald Stanley Lee in the same
manner) Conrad has been forced upon the public notice in the United
States, and it is the fashion among all who pretend to aesthetic
consciousness to read him, or, at all events, to talk about him. His
books have been brought together in a uniform edition for the newly
intellectual, bound in blue leather, like the "complete library sets" of
Kipling, O. Henry, Guy de Maupassant and Paul de Kock. The more literary
newspapers print his praises; he is hymned by professorial critics as a
prophet of virtue; his genius is certificated by such diverse
authorities as Hildegarde Hawthorne and Louis Joseph Vance; I myself
lately sat on a Conrad Committee, along with Booth Tarkington, David
Belasco, Irvin Cobb, Walter Pritchard Eaton and Hamlin Garland--surely
an astounding posse of _literati_! Moreover, Conrad himself shows a
disposition to reach out for a wider audience.
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