Looking for a Few Good Conservative Novels

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Possessed(also called The Demons) by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Almost anything by Dostoevsky is conservative, but perhaps those to the most. He is probably the most conservative major novelist there is.

It'd not a novel, but King Lear by Shakespeare.

From Joseph Conrad, I would say Nostromo and Under Western Eyes might stand out as "conservative." It would be interesting to discuss Secret Agent and HOD, though. Ironically, Chinua Achebe acussed Conrad of racism and pro-imperialism in HOD in a famous essay. But personally, I think Achebe was an idiot, at least in that essay. No doubt, there is a critic of imperialism in HOD, but that is not a contradiction to being conservativee. Personally, I found that HOD was not about the political at it's most important level, but maybe that's just me.

No doubt, there is a critic of imperialism in HOD, but that is not a contradiction to being conservativee. Personally, I found that HOD was not about the political at it's most important level, but maybe that's just me.

I think you're right about the most important level of the story. But if you were a flag-waving imperialist a century ago, you might have found the implications of Heart of Darkness disturbing, though.

Conrad did well to set his story in a foreign colony. That way he and his readers could continue to see the British Empire as uplifting, while foreign empires could be inhumane and monstrous.

The situation in his other works similarly resists being boiled down to a simplistic political point. He clearly detested the Russian Empire, but found a lot to criticize in Russia's revolutionaries.

When Conrad was writing his best works, it wasn't assumed that there were only two sides to every question and that one had to be in one camp or another.

If I were forced to choose, I'd say that Joseph Conrad was a "conservative" writer, but great writing transcends political categories and mediocre writing gets stuck in them.

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