Where the attack on Great Britain was coming from
“The Inheritors” by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford is an experimental alien novel from the early days of science fiction.
In 1901, the novel “The Inheritors” by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford was published. One is a Polish-British writer born in the Russian Empire and the founder of the sea adventure genre, and the other is an English writer, publisher, and literary critic of German descent. Madox Ford has been included in several lists of the best English novels of the 20th century. In 1898, these two writers joined forces to create three collaborative works. One of them is “The Inheritors," a novel that was successfully forgotten and resurfaced in the “Forgotten Classics” series. Literary critic Ekaterina Petrova of Real Time discusses the intricacies of the two writers' collaboration on the novel.
A Good Bad Collaboration
Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford's collaboration presumably began in September 1898 and lasted until 1903, when their third collaborative book, “Romance," was published. After that, the writers remained in close contact until they quarreled in 1909. However, they reconciled two years later. It is believed that the works created within this alliance became the starting point for Conrad's transition from maritime themes to more political novels. For Ford, the collaboration was quite utilitarian: he gained experience and acquired the necessary skills for a writer. Although later Ford considered this period to be “lost years” due to family problems, financial difficulties, and acquired neurosis.
The novel “The Inheritors” remained out of sight of critics for a long time. Ford said that Conrad considered the book “damn good.” Conrad himself, in response to a review in The New York Times, emphasized that the novel is still experimental. Therefore, it should not be judged strictly. He also noted that Ford wrote most of the book. Therefore, according to Conrad, it turned out to be “less lively and convincing.” His co-author was more categorical about their joint work. In 1920, he wrote that “none of these books have any artistic value.” Although researcher Paul Skinner is confident that Ford said this “under pressure of time” and “painful personal history.”
Despite such a polar attitude towards their own work, “The Inheritors” definitely has its advantages. It is one of the early works in the science fiction genre. In addition, it has a political subtext, which, for example, was new for Conrad's work at that time. “The Inheritors” is a short novel of nineteen chapters, each of which is about 8-12 pages long. The writers themselves said that the book has less than 65 thousand words, of which Joseph Conrad wrote no more than two thousand. He just “put the finishing touch to each scene.”
The main character is a young writer from high society, Arthur Etchingham-Granger. One day he meets a mysterious girl who claims that she comes from a certain “Fourth Dimension.” She does not recognize any existing traditions and values. Her mission is to bury the old order. Granger does not take these strange statements seriously, deciding that she is just a foreigner with her own special mentality that he does not understand. He falls in love with the mysterious girl and gets involved in a conspiracy. The goal of this conspiracy is to convince the British public that the ideals of honor and conscience were needed to deceive on a gigantic scale. The mysterious guest penetrates the aristocratic but impoverished Granger family, poses as his sister, and gains power over many influential British politicians and financiers.
A New Era
The language of the novel is quite peculiar for science fiction. The text contains many picturesque details and vivid images. Presumably, all these embellishments belong to Ford Madox Ford, who was greatly influenced by the works of the Pre-Raphaelites. And Ford may have borrowed the main character's meeting with aliens from H.G. Wells. Ford also said that he was greatly influenced by Henry James, Marcel Proust, and Joseph Conrad himself. According to Ford, they can be considered heirs who took literature by the scruff of the neck, shook it well, and brought it into a new, modern era for the benefit of other heirs — readers.
“The Inheritors," created as a hybrid work, is both a political novel with a key and a science fiction novel in the best traditions of Wells. This novel appeared at the dawn of the genre's origin. From this point of view, it is a bit naive. However, it can be seen as satire on culture and imperialism in Britain at the turn of the century. It is curious that the Anglo-Boer War broke out two weeks after Ford read the first chapters of the novel to Conrad.
As possible science fiction writers, Conrad and Ford highlighted the widespread fascination of people of that time with the “fourth dimension” in the novel. It was believed that scientific discoveries would expand the horizon of opportunities for humans but also bring new dangers. Several researchers claim that Conrad was inspired to write the novel by a visit to Glasgow in late September 1998. There he saw a presentation of an X-ray machine and heard numerous discussions about the “secret of the universe," якобы contained in the “existence of horizontal waves.” All this led Conrad to the idea that two universes could exist in the same place and at the same time. Hence the image of the “Fourth Dimension” and its main representative — the mysterious girl.
“The Inheritors” is not the novel that will immerse you in a well-written fantasy world. It is not the novel to start with if you have not read Joseph Conrad's works for some reason. But it is the novel that will introduce you to Ford Madox Ford, who is little known to Russian readers. Because it is in this work that all the зародыши творчества и тем, которые разовьются в уже более поздних произведениях писателя, first appeared.
Publisher: Subscription Publications, Yandex Books
Translation from English: Sergei Karpov
Number of pages: 224
Year: 2025
Age restriction: 16+
Ekaterina Petrova — literary critic for Realnoe Vremya online newspaper and host of the Telegram channel Buns with Poppy Seeds.