Search results for ""author joseph conrad""
WW Norton & Co Heart of Darkness
A haunting critique of European colonialism in Africa, Heart of Darkness recounts Charles Marlow’s perilous expedition up the Congo River in search of Mr. Kurtz, the powerful and enigmatic commander of a Belgian ivory trading post. As Marlow draws closer to and finally reaches the target of his obsession, admiration turns to horror at the colonizers’ atrocities laid bare before him. Its famously cryptic narrative structure, richly layered with symbolic undertones, evokes a hazy, menacing atmosphere that has sparked countless reinterpretations and adaptations to this day.
£9.67
Broadview Press Ltd Lord Jim
One of Joseph Conrad’s greatest novels, Lord Jim brilliantly combines adventure and analysis. Haunted by the memory of a moment of lost nerve during a disastrous voyage, Jim submits to condemnation by a Court of Inquiry. In the wake of his disgrace he travels to the exotic region of Patusan, and as the agent at this remote trading post comes to be revered as ‘Tuan Jim.’ Here he finds a measure of serenity and respect within himself. However, when a gang of thieves arrives on the island, the memory of his earlier disgrace comes again to the fore, and his relationship with the people of the island is jeopardized.This new Broadview edition is based on the first British edition of 1900, which provides the historical basis for the accompanying critical and contextual discussions. The appendices include a wide variety of Conrad’s source material, documents concerning the scandal of the Jeddah, along with other materials such as a substantial selection of early critical comments.
£24.95
Penguin Books Ltd Nostromo
Nostromo, published in 1904, is one of Conrad's finest works. Nostromo -- though one hundred years old -- says as much about today's Latin America as any of the finest recent accounts of that region's turbulent political life. Insistently dramatic in its storytelling, spectacular in its recreation of the subtropical landscape, this picture of an insurrectionary society and the opportunities it provides for moral corruption gleams on every page with its author's dry, undeceived, impeccable intelligence.
£9.99
Vintage Publishing Heart of Darkness: And Youth
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY TIM BUTCHERThe silence of the jungle is broken only by the ominous sound of drumming. Life on the river is brutal and unknown threats lurk in the darkness. Marlow's mission to captain a steamer upriver into the dense interior leads him into conflict with the others who haunt the forest. But his decision to hunt down the mysterious Mr Kurtz, an ivory trader who is the subject of sinister rumours, leads him into more than just physical peril.
£7.78
Broadview Press Ltd Heart of Darkness
The first incarnation of this Broadview edition of Heart of Darkness appeared in 1995, the second in 1999; both were widely acclaimed, and the Goonetilleke Heart of Darkness remained for many years one of Broadview's best-selling titles. For the third edition the book has been completely revised and updated to take account of the scholarship of the most recent generation. The introduction has been extensively rewritten, and the appendices of contextual materials thoroughly overhauled.The two previous editions of the Goonetilleke Heart of Darkness included a substantial selection of documents on the history of Benin, ranging from excerpts taken from Olaudah Equiano's eighteenth-century narrative to documents concerning the Benin massacre of 1897. Those documents concerning a neighboring Bantu society were included in large part because of the paucity of known late nineteenth-century documents concerning the Congo by black Africans - or indeed by black observers of any nationality. In place of those Benin-related materials, this new edition includes substantial excerpts from George Washington Williams's Letter to Leopold II, as well as substantial excerpts from an extraordinary document not included in any other edition of Heart of Darkness (but discussed extensively in two ground-breaking twenty-first century works of scholarship, David Van Reybrouck's Congo: The Epic History of a People and Maya Jasanoff's The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World): the autobiography of Disasi Makulo. Makulo grew up near the shore of the Congo River in the 1880s and early 1890s, was enslaved by notorious ivory dealer Tippu Tip, and then was taken under the wing of Henry Morgan Stanley. Makulo's account - substantial excerpts of which are here translated into English for the first time - opens an unprecedented window on life in the equatorial forest of the Congo in the late nineteenth century.
£16.51
Random House USA Inc Heart of Darkness: Introduction by Verlyn Klinkenborg
£18.66
Random House USA Inc Victory: Introduction by Tony Tanner
£25.00
Penguin Books Ltd The Shadow-Line
A young and inexperienced sea captain finds that his first command leaves him with a ship stranded in tropical seas and a crew smitten with fever. As he wrestles with his conscience and with the increasing sense of isolation that he experiences, the captain crosses the ‘shadow-line’ between youth and adulthood. In many ways an autobiographical narrative, Conrad's novella was written at the start of the Great War when his son Borys was at the Western Front, and can be seen as an attempt to open humanity’s eyes to the qualities needed to face evil and destruction.
£9.04
Oxford University Press Victory
Victory, don't forget, has come out of my innermost self. Victory was the last of Conrad's novels to be set in the Malay Archipelago. Sub-titled 'An Island Tale', it tells the story of Axel Heyst who, damaged by his dead father's nihilistic philosophy, has retreated from the world of commerce and colonial exploration to live alone on the island of Samburan. But Heyst's solitary existence ends when he rescues an English girl from her rapacious patron and takes her off to his retreat. She in turn recalls him to love and life, until the world breaks in on them once more with tragic consequences. In this love story Conrad created two of his psychologically most complex and compelling characters in a narrative of great erotic power. This new edition uses the English first edition text and has a new chronology and bibliography. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
£8.42
WW Norton & Co Heart of Darkness: A Norton Critical Edition
This edition includes a newly edited text based on the 1902 edition. Textual History and Editing Principles provides an overview of the controversies and ambiguities surrounding Heart of Darkness. Included are background and source materials, and contemporary responses to the novella along with essays in criticism, including a new section on film adaptations.
£13.89
Random House USA Inc Typhoon and Other Stories: Introduction by Martin Seymour-Smith
£20.79
WW Norton & Co Lord Jim: A Norton Critical Edition
All discrepancies have been checked against the second English edition and the second American edition; the resulting Textual Notes include over 500 substantive changes. The text is thoroughly annotated, and the editor has added a "Glossary of Eastern and Nautical Terms." "Backgrounds" includes the complete text of "Tuan Jim." "Sources" is a special section edited for this Norton Critical Edition by Dr. Norman Sherry of the University of Liverpool, presenting his discoveries about the real-life counterpart of Lord Jim, the incidents described in the novel, and life in the Dutch East Indies in the nineteenth century. Dr. Sherry is the author of Conrad's Eastern World. Among the perspectives presented in "Criticism" are those of Hugh Clifford, Albert J. Guerard, Ian Watt, Fredric Jameson, J. Hillis Miller, Edward Said, Philip M. Weinstein, Paul B. Armstrong, Marianne DeKoven, and Daphana Erdinast-Vulcan.
£25.20
Broadview Press Ltd Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is based upon Joseph Conrad’s own experience in the Congo; “it is,” as he remarks in his 1916 author’s note to Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories, “experience pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts.” Unlike many other editions, this new edition of Conrad’s most famous tale focuses on the time in which Conrad was himself in the Congo, while also exploring the differences between his reported experiences and their reshaping in fiction.This edition includes an extensive selection of Conrad’s correspondence and autobiographical writing, as well as contemporary accounts of the Congo from other writers. Contemporary reviews situate Heart of Darkness in its literary contexts.
£13.95
Pan Macmillan Heart of Darkness & other stories
Sinister and incisive, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad has retained the fascination of readers and scholars alike. It is accompanied here by the stories with which it has been published since 1902: the autobiographical Youth, and the tale of an old man's fall from fortune, The End of the Tether.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition features an afterword by Dr Keith Carabine, specialist in American literature and former chair of the Joseph Conrad society.One night on the Thames, Charles Marlowe tells his fellow sailors the vivid and brutal tale of his time as a riverboat captain in the Belgian Congo. From the mists of London we are whisked to the darkness of Africa’s colonial heart – and into the thrall of the tyrannical Kurtz, an ivory trader who has established himself as a terrifying demi-god.
£9.99
£10.45
Random House USA Inc The Secret Agent: Introduction by Paul Theroux
£20.56
Oxford University Press Typhoon and Other Tales
TYPHOON * FALK * AMY FOSTER *THE SECRET SHARER The four tales in this volume share autobiographical origins in Conrad's experience at sea and his exile from Poland, the country of his birth. 'Typhoon' is the story of a steamship and her crew beset by tempest, and of the stolid captain whose dogged courage is tested to the limit. In 'Falk' a taciturn young woman is bizarrely courted by a tug-boat master who is haunted by a terrible secret. 'Amy Foster' tells of an emigrant Pole struggling to overcome isolation and prejudice in England. The final tale, 'The Secret Sharer', is Conrad's most famous short story, a masterpiece of suspense and ambiguity. Giving sanctuary to a fugitive sailor, a young sea-captain risks his ship and his command in order to save him. This revised edition uses the English first edition texts and has a new chronology and bibliography. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
£9.04
Oxford University Press The Shadow-Line: A Confession
'A sudden passion of anxious impatience rushed through my veins and gave me such a sense of the intensity of existence as I have never felt before or since.' link title to catalogue entry](exact date?)Written in 1915, The Shadow-Line is based upon events and experiences from twenty-seven years earlier to which Conrad returned obsessively in his fiction. A young sea captain's first command brings with it a succession of crises: his sea is becalmed, the crew laid low by fever, and his deranged first mate is convinced that the ship is haunted by the malignant spirit of a previous captain. This is indeed a work full of 'sudden passions', in which Conrad is able to show how the full intensity of existence can be experienced by the man who, in the words of the older Captain Giles, is prepared to 'stand up to his bad luck, to his mistakes, to his conscience'. A subtle and penetrating analysis of the nature of manhood, The Shadow-Line investigates varieties of masculinity and desire in a subtext that counterpoints the tale's seemingly conventional surface. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
£9.04
Oxford University Press Chance
'no consideration, no delicacy, no tenderness, no scruples should stand in the way of a woman ... from taking the shortest cut towards securing for herself the easiest possible existence' Chance(1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl who is 'like a beggar,without a right to anything but compassion'. After her bankrupt father is imprisoned, she learns the harsh fact that a woman in her position 'has no resources but in herself. Her only means of action is to be what she is.' Flora's long struggle to achieve some dignity and happiness makes her Conrad's most moving female character. Reflecting the contemporary interest in the New Woman and the Suffragette question, Chance also marks the final appearance of Marlow, Conrad's most effective and wise narrator. This revised edition uses the English first edition text and has a new chronology and bibliography. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
£9.99
Oxford University Press Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
'I have heard no end of tales of his strength, his audacity, his fidelity...incorruptible! It is indeed a name of honour for the Capataz of the Cargadores of Sulaco.' One of the greatest political novels in any language, Nostromo enacts the establishment of modern capitalism in a remote South American province locked between the Andes and the Pacific. In the harbourtown of Sulaco, a vivid cast of characters is caught up in a civil war to decide whether its fabulously wealthy silver mine, funded by American money but owned by a third-generation English immigrant, can be preserved from the hands of venal politicians. Greed and corruption seep into the lives of everyone, and Nostromo, the principled Capataz, is tested to the limit. Conrad's evocation of the great Latin-American landscapes, the ferocity of its politics, and individuals swept up in imperial ambitions has never been bettered. This edition offers new insights into Conrad's masterpiece. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
£9.99
WW Norton & Co The Secret Agent: A Norton Critical Edition
This Norton Critical Edition offers the first English book edition of the novel (1907), with explanatory footnotes. Accompanying this are contemporary sources that informed Joseph Conrad’s writing of the novel, including newspaper accounts of the “Greenwich Bomb Outrage”, articles from the anarchist press, earlier treatments of the Martial Bourdin case in fiction, and texts related both to anarchism and fin-de-siècle culture. Seven wide-ranging critical essays are included, along with a chronology and a bibliography.
£20.64
Oxford University Press Lord Jim
'To the white men in the waterside business and to the captain of ships he was just Jim - nothing more. He had, of course, another name, but he was anxious that it should not be pronounced.' Lord Jim tells the story of a young, idealistic Englishman - 'as unflinching as a hero in a book' - who is disgraced by a single act of cowardice while serving as an officer on the Patna, a merchant-ship sailing from an Eastern port. His life is blighted: an isolated scandal assumes horrifying proportions. An older man, Marlow, befriends Jim, and helps to establish him in Patusan, a remote Malay settlement. There he achieves a kind of peace, but his courage is put to the test once more. Lord Jim is one of the most profound and rewarding psychological novels in English. Set in the context of social change and colonial expansion in late Victorian England, it embodies in Jim the values and the turmoil of a fading empire. In his introduction and notes to this new edition Jacques Berthoud explores the social and cultural dynamics that inform the novel. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
£8.99
Oxford University Press The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
'An impenetrable mystery seems destined to hang for ever over this act of madness or despair.' Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London's Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be 'A Simple Tale' proves to involve politicians, policemen, foreign diplomats and London's fashionable society in the darkest and most surprising interrelations. Based on the text which Conrad's first English readers enjoyed, this new edition includes a critical introduction which describes Conrad's great London novel as the realization of a 'monstrous town', a place of idiocy, madness, criminality, and butchery. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
£9.04
Oxford University Press Heart of Darkness and Other Tales
HEART OF DARKNESS * AN OUTPOST OF PROGRESS * KARAIN * YOUTH The finest of all Conrad's tales, 'Heart of Darkness' is set in an atmosphere of mystery and menace, and tells of Marlow's perilous journey up the Congo River to relieve his employer's agent, the renowned and formidable Mr Kurtz. What he sees on his journey, and his eventual encounter with Kurtz, horrify and perplex him, and call into question the very bases of civilization and human nature. Endlessly reinterpreted by critics and adapted for film, radio, and television, the story shows Conrad at his most intense and sophisticated. The other three tales in this volume depict corruption and obsession, and question racial assumptions. Set in the exotic surroundings of Africa, Malaysia. and the east, they variously appraise the glamour, folly, and rapacity of imperial adventure. This revised edition uses the English first edition texts and has a new chronology and bibliography. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
£8.42
Penguin Books Ltd Under Western Eyes
'It was I who removed de P- this morning.' With these chilling words Victor Haldin shatters the solitary, industrious existence of Razumov, his fellow student at St Petersburg University. Razumov aims to overcome the denial of his noble birth by a brilliant career in the tsarist bureaucracy created by Peter the Great. But in pre-revolutionary Russia Peter's legacy is autocracy tempered by assassination; and Razumov is soon caught in a tragic web with Haldin's trustful sister Natalia in spy-haunted Geneva. Their fateful story is told by an elderly Englishman who loves Natalia but plays his part of a 'dense Westerner' to the end.
£12.99
Penguin Books Ltd The Secret Agent
The Secret Agent is Joseph Conrad's dark satire on English society, edited with an introduction and notes by Michael Newton in Penguin Classics.In the only novel Conrad set in London, The Secret Agent communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by Verloc, a Russian spy working for the police, and ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho. His masters instruct him to discredit the anarchists in a humiliating fashion, and when his evil plan goes horribly awry, Verloc must deal with the repercussions of his actions. While rooted in the Edwardian period, Conrad's tale remains strikingly contemporary, with its depiction of Londoners gripped by fear of the terrorists living in their midst. This edition of The Secret Agent contains a chronology, further reading, notes and maps of London and Greenwich. In his introduction, Michael Newton discusses London's real-life world of political anarchy, and Conrad's portrayal of the Verlocs' marriage.Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was born in the Ukraine and grew up under Tsarist autocracy. After spending years in the French, and later the British Merchant Navy, Conrad left the sea to devote himself to writing. In 1896 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.If you enjoyed The Secret Agent, you might like Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Demons, also available in Penguin Classics.'A brilliant book, one of the greatest works of modern irony'Malcolm Bradbury
£9.04
Vintage Publishing The Secret Agent: With an Introduction by Giles Foden
‘Spookily topical’ Guardian Read the world’s first political thriller.London is under threat. It has become a haven for political exiles and anarchists. Frequent bomb threats and disturbances interrupt the lives of the city's inhabitants, who live in fear of the terrorists in their midst. One such terrorist is Verloc. He is the secret agent who is given the mission to strike right at the heart of London's pride by blowing up Greenwich Observatory. But his decision to drag his innocent family into the plot leads to tragic consequences on a more personal than political level. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GILES FODEN
£8.42
WW Norton & Co Heart of Darkness
Acclaimed illustrator Peter Kuper delivers a visually immersive and profound adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s controversial classic that “doesn’t just retell the book [but] destabilizes it, forcing a reconsideration” (Etelka Lechoczy, NPR). Longtime admirers of the novella will appreciate his innovative interpretations, while new readers will discover a brilliant introduction to a canonical work of twentieth-century literature.
£13.60
Macmillan Learning Heart of Darkness
£16.92
WW Norton & Co Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has unsettled generations of readers with its haunting portrait of colonialism and the brutal exploitation of African lives. Peter Kuper’s graphic adaptation reimagines this masterpiece for a new generation. Illustrated to evoke early twentieth-century woodcuts, Kuper’s Heart of Darkness confronts Conrad’s famously ambiguous, labyrinthine sentences and invents in stark black and white panels a visual language that excavates the hidden corners of Conrad’s 1899 masterpiece. Capturing the ominous atmosphere and hellish conditions of the Belgian Congo, Kuper transforms this lurid tale of madness, greed and evil into something shockingly modern. Long-time admirers of the novel will see Conrad’s opus with new eyes while new readers will discover a brilliant introduction to a classic work.
£16.99
WW Norton & Co The Secret Sharer and Other Stories: A Norton Critical Edition
The stories in this Norton Critical Edition maintain the connection and sequencing that Joseph Conrad saw among them. They are accompanied by explanatory annotations, a note on the texts and a preface. Also included are documents related to Conrad’s sources for the stories. To help readers navigate, the editor includes a glossary of nautical terms as well as diagrams of the kinds of ships that appear in the stories.
£16.53
SelfMadeHero Heart of Darkness
This deeply atmospheric rendering of Conrad’s classic dees colonial trader, Marlow, recount his journey into the heart of Africa and his discovery of Kurtz, a company manager rumoured to have gone mad. As the details of Kurtz's dealings with the natives and his state of mind unfold, the lines between perception and interpretation of madness begin to blur. Continuing SelfMadeHero's acclaimed Eye Classics series, Heart of Darkness is revived for a new generation in a format perfect for the graphic novel genre.
£12.99
Cambridge University Press Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
Joseph Conrad's Nostromo (1904) is widely considered his modernist masterpiece. The first of his major political novels, it depicts the effects of repeated revolution in a fictional South American state under the growing influence of the United States of America. It is an enduring portrait of global economics and politics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This first comprehensive and authoritative critical edition offers an introduction clarifying the novel's origins and sources, while explanatory notes detail literary and historical references. An accompanying essay lays out the history of composition and publication, detailing interventions made by Conrad's editors. Also included are appendices of Conrad's source material; glossaries of nautical and foreign terms; a map; and reproductions of early drafts. By returning to (and respecting) Conrad's own early manuscript and typescript forms, this edition presents the novel and its preface in a form more authoritative than any so far.
£94.99
Cambridge University Press The Inheritors and The Nature of a Crime
This volume offers scholars the first authoritative text of two works produced collaboratively by two of the most important modern British novelists. Long hard to obtain and frequently neglected by critics, each can now be appreciated both in its own right and as part of the two authors' individual oeuvres. This scholarly edition situates both works in the context of the writers' meeting and ongoing collaboration, providing illuminating literary and historical references and detailing the works' composition history and reception in the UK and America. As well as establishing definitive texts of both works and of the authors' prefaces written for the 1924 republication of The Nature of a Crime, this edition also includes Ford's own 1924 account of his collaboration with Conrad on The Inheritors, as well as the text of Ford's 'The Old Story', a hitherto unpublished early draft of the basic plot of The Nature of a Crime.
£94.99
Penguin Books Ltd Heart of Darkness
A haunting Modernist masterpiece and the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's Oscar-winning film Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness explores the limits of human experience and the nightmarish realities of imperialism. Conrad's narrator Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, recounts his physical and psychological journey in search of the infamous ivory trader Kurtz: dying, insane, and guilty of unspeakable atrocities. Travelling upriver to the heart of the African continent, he gradually becomes obsessed by this enigmatic, wraith-like figure. Marlow's discovery of how Kurtz has gained his position of power over the local people involves him in a radical questioning, not only of his own nature and values, but also those of western civilisation. Part of a major series of new editions of Conrad's most famous works in Penguin Classics, this volume contains Conrad's Congo Diary, a chronology, further reading, notes, a map of the Congo, a glossary and an introduction discussing the author's experiences in Africa, the narrative and symbolic complexities of Heart of Darkness and critical responses to the novel.Edited with an introduction by Owen Knowles'Seems to reach into the heart of Conrad himself' Peter Ackroyd
£8.42
Penguin Books Ltd Lord Jim
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.
£9.99
Wordsworth Editions Ltd Lord Jim
Introduction and Notes by Susan Jones, St Hilda's College, Oxford. First published in 1900, Lord Jim established Conrad as one of the great storytellers of the twentieth century. Set in the Malay Archipelago, the novel not only provides a gripping account of maritime adventure and romance, but also an exotic tale of the East. Its themes also challenge the conventions of nineteenth-century adventure fiction, confirming Conrad's place in literature as one of the first 'modernists' of English letters. Lord Jim explores the dilemmas of conscience, of moral isolation, of loyalty and betrayal confronting a sensitive individual whose romantic quest for an honourable ideal are tested to the limit. In this novel, Conrad draws on his background as Polish emigré, as well as his first-hand experience as a seaman, to experiment radically with the presentation of human frailty and doubt in the modern world.
£5.90
Wordsworth Editions Ltd The Secret Agent
With an Introduction and Notes by Hugh Epstein, Secretary of the Joseph Conrad Society of Great Britain. 'Then the vision of an enormous town presented itself, of a monstrous town...a cruel devourer of the world's light. There was room enough there to place any story, depth enough for any passion, variety enough there for any setting, darkness enough to bury five millions of lives.' Conrad’s ‘monstrous town’ is London, and his story of espionage and counter-espionage, anarchists and embassies, is a detective story that becomes the story of Winnie Verloc’s tenacity in maintaining her devotion to her peculiar and simple-minded brother, Stevie, as they pursue their very ordinary lives above a rather dubious shop in the back streets of Soho. However, far from offering any sentimental picture, The Secret Agent is Conrad’s funniest novel. Its savagely witty picture of human absurdity and misunderstanding is written in an ironic style that provokes laughter and unease at the same time, and that continues to provide one of the most disturbing visions of aspiration and futility in twentieth century literature.
£5.90
Wordsworth Editions Ltd Heart of Darkness
Introduction and Notes by Gene M. Moore, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Generally regarded as the pre-eminent work of Conrad's shorter fiction, Heart of Darkness is a chilling tale of horror which, as the author intended, is capable of many interpretations. Set in the Congo during the period of rapid colonial expansion in the 19th century, the story deals with the highly disturbing effects of economic, social and political exploitation of European and African societies and the cataclysmic behaviour this induced in some individuals. The other two stories in this book – Youth and The End of the Tether – concern the sea and those who sail upon it, a genre in which Conrad reigns supreme.
£5.90