Conrad and women

"Supported by an enduring critical paradigm, the traditional account of Conrad's career privileges his public image as man of the sea, addressing himself to a male audience and male concerns. This book challenges received assumptions by recovering Conrad's relationship to women not only in his life but in his fiction and among his readers. Susan Jones reinstates the female influences arising from his early Polish life and culture; his friendship with the French writer Marguerite Poradowska; his engagement with popular women's writing; and his experimentation with visuality as his later works appear in the visual contexts of 'women's pages' of popular journals."--Jacket.