Ashley MS 2949

'The Black Mate': a short story by Joseph Conrad; [1908?]. Autograph draft, written on one side only of ninety-eight quarto leaves of ruled white wove paper. No watermark. The draft is entitled 'The Black Mate' in Conrad's hand. With the exception of the first, the leaves have been foliated by Conrad. He has foliated f. 15 '15 & 16', and thereafter ff. 16-57 have been foliated '17-58'. Conrad has foliated f. 58 '58A', and thereafter the foliation runs from 59-98. Pencil directions, apparently to a typist, have been added by Conrad on f. 1 ('2 copies today please'), f. 27 ('2 Copies tomorrow morning please. Begin paging 12'), f. 41 ('2 copies today, please begin paging 18'), and f. 69 ('2 copies begin paging 30'). At the foot of f. 98 Conrad has added in pencil 'End'.

'The Black Mate' was stated by Conrad to have been written in 1886 for a competition in the magazine Tit-Bits. His wife, however, claimed that the story published in 1908 was an original tale suggested by herself. Wherever the truth may lie, it is clear that the present MS. was written in the twentieth century. The same paper is used throughout, and on f. 1 is the sentence 'I am speaking here of the [late] eighties of the last century . . .' (the words in italics being interlined with a caret above 'last'). The MS. is moreover, full of false starts, deletions and heavy revisions suggesting that, even if Conrad did write a similar tale in the 1880's, in the present text he reworked the plot so thoroughly as to give it the status of an original and separate composition. The final text found in the MS. differs here and there, but not in any major respect, from that first printed in The London Magazine for April 1908, pp. 121-135. Ashley Library Catalogue, viii, p. 121.

Quarto; ff. ii+98.

Joseph Conrad, alias Teodor Jósef Konrad Korzeniowski, novelist: Fiction: Short story, 'The Black Mate' by Joseph Conrad: [1908?]: Autogr. draft.