Book description
This compact novel, completed in 1900, as with so many of the great
novels of the time, is at its baseline a book of the sea. An English boy
in a simple town has dreams bigger than the outdoors and embarks at an
early age into the sailor's life. The waters he travels reward him with
the ability to explore the human spirit, while Joseph Conrad launches
the story into both an exercise of his technical prowess and a
delicately crafted picture of a character who reaches the status of a
literary hero.
Joseph Conrad was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under
Tsarist autocracy. In 1874 Conrad travelled to Marseilles, where he
served in French merchant vessels before joining a British ship in
1878 as an apprentice. In 1886 he obtained British nationality. Eight
years later he left the sea to devote himself to writing, publishing
his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1895. The following year
he settled in Kent, where he produced within fifteen years such modern
classics as Youth, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Typhoon, Nostromo,
The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes. He continued to
write until his death in 1924.
Allan Simmons is Reader in English Literature at St Mary's College.
He is the author of Joseph Conrad (2006) for Palgrave.
J. H. Stape is the author of The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad
(1996) and Conrad's Notes on Life and Letters (2004).
