When F. R. Leavis, one of the early rescuers of Joseph Conrad's then uncertain literary reputation, included that writer in his “Great Tradition” in 1948, he saved Conrad from the “infernal tail of ships” Conrad claimed followed him (Jean-Aubrey, Conrad, II, p. 316). In doing so, he privileged Conrad's more obviously modernist productions, thus securing for the Polish sailor a place in the academy. As a result, Leavis, the academy, and the anthologies gave short shrift to the early works and consigned them to an easily forgotten shelf marked “apprentice fiction,” as though they were maverick, somehow, and therefore of little significance. However, ideas intrinsic to those early works pertain throughout Conrad's work. The books are especially significant in their pivotal attitudes towards the subject of empire.

Reading Conrad only in Leavis' “great” tradition would not only silence the early work, but also necessitate a particular point of view, one that places Conrad in the established mainstream of English novelists. Leavis admits that Conrad “brought a great deal from outside”, and goes on to assert, rather vaguely, that, nonetheless,