‘No one’, concludes Mr. Warner,’ will ever again be able to write a serious story about the sea without having in his mind the chastening thought of the best of Conrad.’
Oliver Warner brings to his assessment of Conrad’s works not only a wide experience of literary criticism, but highly specialized knowledge of sea subjects and of writers about the sea. Coming from a family which appreciates men of action-he is a direct descendant of Oliver Cromwell-Mr. Warner has worked in the Admiralty, and was a member of the War Artists Advisory Committee. He is a contributor on naval subjects to the Mariners’ Mirror, and author of books on British Marine Painting, and on Captain Marryat. He has also published a study of Conrad in Longmans’ Men and Books’ Series.
His career, on its purely literary side, began when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge with contributions to the Cambridge Review and the well-known University magazine The Granta. He is the author of a novel, a book of miniatures Captains and Kings, and a life of George Monck, who restored Charles II. He was for many years a publisher’s reader with Chatto and Windus, and is well known as a contributor of articles and book reviews to the leading magazines of Great Britain.