His "Victory," first
published in _Munsey's Magazine_, revealed obvious efforts to be
intelligible to the general. A few more turns of the screw and it might
have gone into the _Saturday Evening Post_, between serials by Harris
Dickson and Rex Beach.
Meanwhile, in the shadow of this painfully growing celebrity as a
novelist, Conrad takes on consideration as a bibelot, and the dealers in
first editions probably make more profit out of some of his books than
ever he has made himself. His manuscripts are cornered, I believe, by an
eminent collector of literary curiosities in New York, who seems to have
a contract with the novelist to take them as fast as they are
produced--perhaps the only arrangement of the sort in literary history.
His first editions begin to bring higher premiums than those of any
other living author. Considering the fact that the oldest of them is
less than twenty-five years old, they probably set new records for the
trade. Even the latest in date are eagerly sought, and it is not
uncommon to see an English edition of a Conrad book sold at an advance
in New York within a month of its publication.
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