Romance (novel)

The writers' wives were involved behind the scenes in the collaborations, often to the despair of Ford, who omitted any mention of Jessie Conrad in his biography.

and again after a further bonding session Conrad wrote that Ford's visit had left him "half dead and [he] crawled into bed for two days".

After the collaboration on Romance was finished, it appears that in 1902 Conrad began to feel a sense of loss over working with Ford for he asked him to keep their partnership alive.

When Tomas Castro berates Kemp for failing to take advantage of opportunities to kill their enemies, his reproaches echo Conrad's strong reaction to Ford's rather delicate early draft of the novel.

A clear statement of the closeness of their working styles, despite a frenetic literary environment, appears in Ford's letter to Olive Garnett: