In 2015, a San Diego rare book collector made literary headlines with the Christie’s auction of letters, photos and other memorabilia by “To Kill a Mockingbird” author Harper Lee. The sale coincided ...

Pity the novelist who aspires to create high art. He may eventually find his place in the literary pantheon after his death. But during his lifetime, the prospects aren’t so pretty. These thoughts are ...

In 1874, Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, a 17-year-old orphan, persuaded his uncle to allow him to join the French merchant marine. After promising never to forget that “wherever you may sail, you ...

Most people hate “Heart of Darkness” the first time they read it. I certainly did, as a high school senior more than 40 years ago, hated everything from its corkscrew sentences to the way its narrator ...

The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World. By Maya Jasanoff. Penguin Press; 400 pages; $30. William Collins; £25. JOSEPH CONRAD was a phenomenon. Born to Polish parents in 1857 in a part of the ...

WHEN I was an undergraduate at Columbia I sometimes used to buy books at Scribner’s retail store, which was then on Fifth Avenue below Twenty-Second Street. A tall soil-spoken gentleman named Simpson ...