ABSTRACT
In the autumn of 1898 two writers, who – as Max Saunders has just reminded them – had become acquainted, examined the possibility of laying aside the work currently in hand in order to collaborate on The Inheritors, their 'extravagant story' originally conceived for development in a Wellsian line. Evidently, wishing to produce something that would sell, Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Hueffer were stimulated by the enormous success enjoyed by The Time Machine, the 1895 scientific romance that begins with a discussion of the geometry of Four Dimensions. According to Ford, Conrad's contribution to The Inheritors was very limited indeed, and, in a work of 75,000 words, it involved no more 'than a thousand – certainly there cannot be two – of Conrad's writing; the crepitate from the emasculated prose like fire-crackers amongst ladies' skirts.' The horrors of his 'administration' of the so-called Congo Free State were first revealed to Conrad by Roger Casement.
