This unique editon brings together twelve classic Conrad tales which mirror, in form and theme, Conrad's own ambiguous and hybrid status in imperial England. This edition is the first to reprint these stories as they first appeared in popular magazines of the time. William Atkinson's introduction explores the "double-voiced" nature of Conrad's narratives as well as his ironic treatment of the adventure-romance genre popularized by his contemporaries, Stevenson, Kipling, and Rider-Haggard.
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language and, although he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he became a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote novels and stories, many in nautical settings, that depict crises of human individuality in the midst of what he saw as an indifferent, inscrutable, and amoral world. Conrad is considered a literary impressionist by some and an early modernist by others, though his works also contain elements of 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters, as in Lord Jim, for example, have influenced numerous authors. Many dramatic films have been adapted from and inspired by his works. Numerous writers and critics have commented that his fictional works, written largely in the first two decades of the 20th century, seem to have anticipated later world events. Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew on the national experiences of his native Poland—during nearly all his life, parceled out among three occupying empires—and on his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world—including imperialism and colonialism—and that profoundly explore the human psyche.