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As early as 1896, Joseph Conrad had been writing to Henry James (there are six extant letters from Conrad to James). On December 24, 1912, Conrad initiated correspondence with Edith Wharton. While the Wharton/Conrad correspondence lasted for several years, only two letters written by Conrad to Wharton have survived, the 1912 letter just mentioned and an October 1, 1917 letter. Critic Frederick Karl characterizes the opening of that first Conrad letter (1912) as one that begins with Conrad's "usual, perfunctory praise of a fellow writer [before] he proceeds to the main content of the letter, his feelings about a possible French translation of 'The Secret Sharer'" (Karl, Library Gazette, 149).
Wharton did not find Conrad's comments to be perfunctory. She believed in the sincerity of his praise of her work. Shortly after receiving Conrad's complimentary letter, she read "The Secret Sharer," which she admired so fully that, as was her habit with writers she respected, she immediately read much, if not all, that Conrad had published to date. During this early reading of his writing, Wharton wrote to Conrad, thus initiating, on her end, a literary fellowship that became long-term, if intermittent. Wharton remained faithful in her ongoing reading of Conrad's work; however, Conrad's subsequent reading of Wharton's writing seems to have been restricted to those works of hers which Wharton sent directly to him.
When Summer was published, Wharton sent Conrad a copy of it; and, on October 1, 1917, Joseph Conrad wrote back to her in a letter filled with praise for the novel. Wharton scholars, understandably, take Conrad's 1917 letter at face value and cite Summer as Conrad's favorite Wharton work. However, Frederick Karl argues that while "Conrad gives high praise to the novel, [...] his praise is of that mechanical kind which he handed out to friends whenever they sent him a new book. The previous month he had written almost the same words to John Galsworthy about his book Beyond" (150). Karl's argument includes passages from Conrad's September 3, 1917 letter to Galsworthy in which the words he uses words in praise of Beyond are conspicuously similar to the words that Conrad wrote to Wharton, less than a month later, in praise of Summer. In structuring his argument, Karl's point...