Excerpt from Joseph Conrad: His Romantic-Realism Imagination is no longer the predominating quality Of the novelist. Since imagination is no longer the ruling quality Of the novelist, what, then, is to replace it? There must always be a ruling quality. Today the ruling characteristic of the novelist is the sense Of reality. The sense of reality is to feel nature and to be able to picture her as she is. In the same way that they formerly said of a novelist, 'he has imagination, ' I demand that they should say today, 'he has a sense Of reality.' This will be grander and more just praise. The ability to see is less common, even, than creative power. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.