Magic Letters and Mental Degradation: Advertising in “An Anarchist” and “The Partner”

Abstract

CONRAD MADE LITTLE SECRET of his contempt for advertising. "I must strongly protest against the abominable advertisement being put op posite my dedication," he admonished his publisher in January 1896 after finding an "Opinions of the Press" page at the front of An Outcast of the Islands (CIA: 261). By the time Conrad made his protest the medium's power over literary production could no longer be ignored or denied. Asking his agent to ensure that the publisher of Typhoon made "a certain amount of fuss about the story," Conrad confessed: "The public's so used to the guidance of Advertis[e]ment! Why! even I myself feel the spell of such emphasis" (CL2: 319). Indeed, it is a nice paradox that disdain for advertising became an integral part of Conrad's public image, itself carefully promoted in later years. After briefly sketching the history of late-Victorian and Edward ian advertising, this essay offers a reappraisal of "An Anarchist" (1906) and "The Partner" (1911), two relatively neglected magazine stories writ ten during the difficult years preceding the commercial success of Twixt Tand and Sea (1912) and Chance (1914). It argues that the representation of advertising in these works evinces critical incisiveness and topicality, and that they anticipate Conrad's sophisticated treatment of the similarly topical theme of finance capitalism in Chance} Both stories situate advertising at the cutting edge of an emergent capitalist system organized around speculation and consumption ? figurative terms whose literal con notations of seeing and eating provided the inspiration for these two tighdy constructed satires. As I seek to show, Conrad's specific choice of a patent medicine and a patent food reflects not just the ubiquity of these