Writing for us
If you have an idea about a Conrad sighting, feature article, or other piece for possible publication in JCT, please write to editor@josephconradtoday.org.
If you are interested in submitting a book review, please select "Book Reviewing" above for more information.
Important information on house style
On matters of style, we follow the MLA Handbook, 9th edition. In specific cases not addressed by the MLA Handbook, we follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition (Chicago Notes style). As an alternative, you are welcome to follow the Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago Notes) throughout.
MLA style is preferred because it allows for clean in-text citations and minimizes notes. If you follow the Chicago Manual of Style instead, please keep content notes to a minimum. Regardless of which style you choose, if you do have notes please make them endnotes rather than footnotes. Furthermore, please do not use note numbers that include electronic links to the notes themselves. Instead, simply place note numbers as superscript numbers in the body of the piece, with the notes themselves formatted as follows, without any electronic link between the two:
1. Robert Hampson, Conrad's Secrets (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 237.
If you do not have a copy of the MLA Handbook, useful information and examples are available here. Likewise, information and examples regarding the Chicago Manual of Style are available here.
When quoting from Conrad's works or his letters, whenever possible please use volumes in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Joseph Conrad, and the Cambridge University Press series The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad.
Also, regardless of style followed:
1. Spelling and punctuation are according to American English. The Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition, is the standard reference.
In particular, look for such spellings as "favour" > "favor" and similar, "symbolise" > "symbolize" and similar, and "centre" > "center."
2. Quoted text is surrounded by double quotation marks; quotes within quotations have single quotation marks. Thus:
"Marlow declares, 'We live, as we dream -- alone. . . .'" (70).
Not: 'Marlow declares, "We live, as we dream -- alone. . . ."' (70).
3. Ellipses are marked by three points each separated by a space.
4. In quoted passages, periods and commas go inside quotation marks; colons, semicolons, question marks, and exclamation points go outside quotation marks unless they are part of the quoted material.
5. Unless the dash appears in quoted material, please format dashes (i.e. em dashes) as follows: "water—and" instead of "water – and."
6. The title of Heart of Darkness is set in italics, rather than in roman font with quotation marks. (If you are quoting material that includes the title, leave it as originally printed.)
7. For electronic sources in bibliographies and notes, please provide the DOI (digital object identifier) instead of the URL, if a DOI is available.
8. For book reviews, a bibliography is not necessary unless you quote from other books. Also, please provide the heading of the book review following these examples:
Conrad and Nature: Essays
Edited by Lissa Schneider-Rebozo, Jeffrey Mathes McCarthy, and John G. Peters
Routledge, 2019
328 pp.
Disappointment: Its Modern Roots from Spinoza to Contemporary Literature
Michael Mack
Bloomsbury Academic, 2021
vii + 288 pp.
A Set of Six
Joseph Conrad
Edited by Allan H. Simmons and Michael Foster, with Owen Knowles
The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Joseph Conrad
Cambridge UP, 2021
lxxiv + 517 pp.
Note that book prices are not necessary. The city of publication is usually not necessary either.
9. If you would like to have your institutional affiliation included with your name, please provide that information. Otherwise, just your name will be indicated.