tutorial, commentary, web links, and study resources

An Anarchist was written late in 1905. It was first serialized in Harper’s Magazine, 1906, then later collected in A Set of Six, 1908 (UK), 1915 (US). The other stories in this collection are Gaspar Ruiz, The Informer, The Brute, The Duel, and Il Conde.

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An Anarchist – critical commentary

Conrad is amazingly frank in his 1908 take-it-or-leave-it introductory notes to A Set of Six, the collection which includes The Anarchist.

Of The Informer and An Anarchist I will say next to nothing. The pedigree of these tales is hopelessly complicated and not worth disentangling at this distance of time. I found them and here they are. The discriminating reader will guess that I have found them within my mind; but how they or their elements came in there I have forgotten for the most part; and for the rest I really don’t see why I should give myself away more than I have done already.

Conrad obviously had an interest in anarchists and the radical political movements of the late nineteenth century (see The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes) but in the case of The Anarchist he depicts someone who is perceived to be an anarchist by someone else (the ranch manager) – but who is simply a victim of fate.

Paul is an ordinary young working man who is criminalized merely because he resists arrest when drunk. When released from jail he is unable to find work, and falls in with a group of anarchists – without ever sharing their political ideology. And when on the penitentiary island he is not particularly active in the revolt against the State (the prison guards).

However, political theory aside, it could be argued that Paul behaves in a manner which many people would consider anarchic. He has some humanitarian scruples in not joining the prisoner revolt in the penitentiary and its aftermath, yet once in the escape boat, he has no scruples about shooting his two fellow escapees and ditching the evidence. He escapes intact, but then refuses the offer to rejoin European society. He is not so much an anarchist as an ‘outsider’.

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An Anarchist – study resources

A Set of Six – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

A Set of Six – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

A Set of Six – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

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An Anarchist – plot summary

An un-named narrator is on a cattle-ranching island in South America. The manager of the company relates how he saved a runaway convict and, convincing himself he was an anarchist from Barcelona, gave him a job as an engineer on the company’s steam boat.

Paul (the convict) then relates his life history to the narrator. Whilst celebrating his twenty-fifth birthday with friends in Paris, he gets drunk, fights with police, and goes to jail. On release he cannot get work. He falls in with a group of anarchists who support themselves by stealing from the rich. When they attempt to rob a bank the plot is foiled and he is deported to a penitentiary island in Cayenne (French Guiana).

The convicts there organise a mutiny and the prison warders are overthrown. Paul does not participate in the uprising for humanitarian reasons. Whilst hiding in some bushes he watches soldiers pursuing convicts, then on finding a revolver he escapes in a boat. Two other convicts seize control of the boat and they all row off to sea to escape.

Paul produces the revolver and takes charge, forcing the other two to do the rowing. When they spot a passenger schooner, the two men suddenly become very friendly towards Paul, but he shoots them both and pushes the bodies overboard, then throws away the gun.

The schooner picks him up and drops him off at the island where the story began. The narrator invites him to leave the island and return to Europe – but he chooses to remain, having become slightly deranged.

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Joseph Conrad – video biography

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Principal characters

I	an un-named European narrator
Harry Gee	the manager of the cattle station
Paul	‘Anarchista de Barcelona’ – actually from Paris

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Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

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The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

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Joseph Conrad’s writing table

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Further reading

Amar Acheraiou Joseph Conrad and the Reader, London: Macmillan, 2009.

Jacques Berthoud, Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Muriel Bradbrook, Joseph Conrad: Poland’s English Genius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941

Harold Bloom (ed), Joseph Conrad (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2010

Hillel M. Daleski , Joseph Conrad: The Way of Dispossession, London: Faber, 1977

Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Aaron Fogel, Coercion to Speak: Conrad’s Poetics of Dialogue, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985

John Dozier Gordon, Joseph Conrad: The Making of a Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1940

Albert J. Guerard, Conrad the Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958

Robert Hampson, Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Language and Fictional Self-Consciousness, London: Edward Arnold, 1979

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Narrative Technique and Ideological Commitment, London: Edward Arnold, 1990

Jeremy Hawthorn, Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad, London: Continuum, 2007.

Owen Knowles, The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990

Jakob Lothe, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008

Gustav Morf, The Polish Shades and Ghosts of Joseph Conrad, New York: Astra, 1976

Ross Murfin, Conrad Revisited: Essays for the Eighties, Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 1985

Jeffery Myers, Joseph Conrad: A Biography, Cooper Square Publishers, 2001.

Zdzislaw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Life, Camden House, 2007.

George A. Panichas, Joseph Conrad: His Moral Vision, Mercer University Press, 2005.

John G. Peters, The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

James Phelan, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008.

Edward Said, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966

Allan H. Simmons, Joseph Conrad: (Critical Issues), London: Macmillan, 2006.

J.H. Stape, The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996

John Stape, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad, Arrow Books, 2008.

Peter Villiers, Joseph Conrad: Master Mariner, Seafarer Books, 2006.

Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, London: Chatto and Windus, 1980

Cedric Watts, Joseph Conrad: (Writers and their Work), London: Northcote House, 1994.

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Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2013

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Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

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More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

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tutorial, synopsis, commentary, and study resources

An Outpost of Progress was written in July 1897 and first appeared in the magazine Cosmopolitan in 1897. Quite amazingly, given the subject of the story, this was a magazine which began as a ‘family magazine’ and eventually became a magazine for women. In the late nineteenth century however, it was a leading outlet for literary fiction, publishing stories by Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, and other leading contemporary writers. The first appearance of An Outpost of Progress in book form was as part of the collection Tales of Unrest published in 1898. The other pieces in this collection were Karain: A Memory. The Idiots. The Return. and The Lagoon.

Cosmopolital Magazine – October 1897

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An Outpost of Progress – story synopsis

Part I.   An unsuccessful painter has been established as chief of a trading outpost somewhere in Africa. When he dies of a fever his replacement is Kayerts, with Carlier as assistant. However, the business is actually run by Makola, who is from Sierra Leone. The director of the trading company thinks the two men he has been sent are quite useless. They themselves feel vulnerable, being cut off from civilization, and each hopes the other will not die, because they would not like to be left alone.

Kayerts is there to earn a dowry for his daughter: Carlier has been sent there by his family because he has no money and is completely idle. They make a perfunctory attempt to improve their sparse quarters, then give up, taking no interest at all in the life that surrounds them. Makola conducts all trade with the local population, swapping ivory for cheap rubbishy European goods.

The two men get caught up childishly in their reading of novels by Dumas, Fennimore Cooper, and Balzac that the director has left behind. They are supported by (and dependent upon) produce donated by Gobila, the chief of a nearby village.

One day they are visited by a menacing group of strangers carrying weapons. The two men do not know what to do – so Makola deals with them but does not report the results. That night there is a lot of drumming and gunshots are heard.

Part II.   The station has a staff of native workers who come from a distant tribe. Makola reports that the armed traders (who are from Luanda) wish to sell some ivory. The next night the workers are given palm wine and Makola trades them as slaves for the ivory. One of Gobila’s men is shot in the process. Kayerts and Carlier protest their outrage, but do nothing. Gobila and his villagers cut off relations (and supplies) with the station.

Since the two men are incapable of finding their own provisions, they begin to deteriorate physically. They are hoping for a visit from the company steamship for supplies, but it does not appear. Then they have a dispute over a trivial issue regarding some remaining lumps of sugar. They chase each other around the outside of the house, but Kayerts has a revolver, and ends up shooting Carlier by accident. Makola has witnessed the scene: they agree to report that Carlier died of a fever and he will be buried next day.

Next morning the station is engulfed in mist. Kayerts awakes to find Carlier’s body next to him, and he panics with fright. At the same moment the company steamer arrives on the river, and Kayerts fears that civilization is coming to judge and condemn him. He commits suicide by hanging himself on the cross marking his predecessor’s grave.

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An Outpost of Progress – study resources

An Outpost of Progress – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

An Outpost of Progress – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

An Outpost of Progress – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

An Outpost of Progress – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

An Outpost of Progress – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

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An Outpost of Progress – principal characters

Kayerts	the new chief of the trading station – fat, small
Carlier	his assistant – tall with thin legs
Makola (Henry Price)	native clerk, from Sierra Leone
Mrs Price	his wife, from Loanda
Gobila	neighbouring village chief

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An Outpost of Progress – commentary

These are the opening lines of the story. The notes which follow offer a detailed interpretation or close reading.

There were two white men in charge of the trading station. Kayerts the chief, was short and fat. Carlier, the assistant, was tall, with a large head and a very broad trunk perched upon a long pair of thin legs.The third man on the staff was a Sierra Leone nigger, who maintained that his name was Henry Price. However, for some reason or other, the natives down the river had given him the name Makola, and it stuck with him through all his wanderings about the country. He spoke English and French with a warbling accent, wrote a beautiful hand, understood book-keeping, and cherished in his innermost heart the worship of evil spirits. His wife was a negress from Loanda, very large and very noisy. Three children rolled about in sunshine before the door of his low shed-like dwelling. Makola, taciturn and impenetrable, despised the two white men. He had charge of a small clay storehouse with a dried grass roof, and pretended to keep a correct account of beads, cotton cloth, red kerchiefs, brass wire, and other trade goods it contained. Besides the storehouse and Makola’s hut, there was only one large building in the cleared ground of the station. It was built neatly of reeds, with a verandah on all the four sides. There were three rooms in it. The one in the middle was the living-room, and had two rough tables and a few stools in it. The other two were the bedrooms for the white men, Each had a bedstead and a mosquito net for all furniture. The plank floor was littered with the belongings of the white men: open half-empty boxes, torn wearing apparel, old boots; all the things dirty, and all the things broken, that accumulate mysteriously around untidy men. There was also another dwelling-place some distance away from the buildings.

A close reading

1. ‘There were two white men in charge of the trading station.’
This is very typical of Conrad’s use of dramatic irony – because we rapidly learn that the two men are only nominally in charge. It is their assistant Makola who really does all the work and determines what goes on, whilst they are hopelessly incompetent. The term ‘white men’ is significant because the story is set against the political background of the exploitation of black Africa by white Europeans.

2. The two names Kayerts and Carlier suggest that the story is set in the Belgian Congo. Kayerts is a Flemish name, and Carlier is French, these being the two linguistic groups which comprise Belgium. The physical description of the two men emphasises their difference in the manner of comic music-hall double acts (of the Laurel and Hardy, Little and Large variety). And the term perched in ‘a very broad trunk perched upon a long pair of thin legs’ is belittling and quasi-comic.

3. ‘Sierra Leone nigger, who maintained his name was Henry Price’
The use of the term ‘maintained’ suggests just the opposite – that Makola has given himself the name Henry Price because he wants to identify his interests with those of his employers. Conrad’s use of the term ‘nigger’ would not be remarkable in 1897 when the story was written.

4. The natives call him ‘Makola’ – and so does Conrad, which reinforces the reading of the previous sentence. His ‘wanderings’ suggest that he is confident and experienced.

5. Makola speaks two European languages in addition to his own African language and his wife’s (which is very likely to be different). He is also a skilled clerk. Thus he has absorbed European culture, in contrast to the two Europeans who are completely incapable of absorbing his. Yet he still worships evil spirits. In other words, he has a foot in both cultures.

6. His wife is from Loanda, which is on the coast of Angola, close to what was once called the ‘Slave Coast’. This is why she understands what the slave traders are saying later in the story.

7. ‘Rolled about’ suggests that the children are at ease in their natural environment. ‘Shed-like’ tells us the poor state of their accommodation.

8. ‘Impenetrable’ is a typical Conradian term – abstract and quasi-philosophical. It tells us that Makola keeps his feelings and his motivation well hidden. It is a similar type of term to those Conrad uses later to describe the topographical setting of the story – ‘hopeless’, ‘irresistible’, and ‘incomprehensible’. Such details contribute to the reason why Africa in a moral sense defeats the two Europeans in the story. The term ‘despised’ however is a key insight into Makola’s judgement and feelings: this points to the element of racial conflict in the story.

9. The ‘trade goods’ in which the station deals are in fact cheap rubbish, and they are being exchanged for ivory, a highly valued item in Europe. The exchange is therefore unfair, and the Africans are being cheated. But the term ‘pretended’ suggests that Makola might be engaged in a little cooking-of-the-books on his own account.

10. The ‘one large building’ reveals just how undeveloped this trading station is, at the same time as emphasising its isolation. The ‘verandah’ which goes round all four sides will be an important feature in the later part of the story when Kayerts is chasing Carlier round the house.

11. The mosquito nets would be important, because the two men are close to the equator, and therefore a long way away from their European homeland. Moreover, the previous chief of the trading post has died of fever.

12. The two men do not know how to look after themselves. The floor of the building is ‘littered’ with their ‘broken’ and ‘dirty’ goods. We also learn that they have come equipped with ‘town wearing apparel’ which is completely inappropriate for living in the tropics.

13. The other ‘dwelling place’ nearby is another example of Conrad’s scathing irony. For this place is the grave of the first station chief. Africa has already killed off one representative of Europe when the story opens – and it will claim two more before it ends.

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Joseph Conrad – video biography

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Conrad’s literary style

In his introductory notes to the collection Tales of Unrest in which An Outpost of Progress appeared, Conrad gives a clear indication that he was aware of breaking new ground in his writing:

almost without noticing it, I stepped into the very different atmosphere of An Outpost of Progress. I found there a different moral attitude. I seemed able to capture new reactions, new suggestions, and even new rhythms for my paragraphs.

It is certainly true that from the late years of the nineteenth century onwards, Conrad developed his very idiosyncratic prose style – one which many people find difficult to follow. His sentences become longer and longer; he uses a rich and sometimes abstract vocabulary; he is much given to quasi-philosophic intrusions into his own narrative; and in some of his novels he uses multiple narrators and a radically fractured chronology of events.

What follow are a series of notes on his style, based on a further passage from An Outpost of Progress.

The two men watched the steamer round the bend, then, ascending arm in arm the slope of the bank, returned to the station. They had been in this vast and dark country only a very short time, and as yet always in the midst of other white men, under the eye and guidance of their superiors. And now, dull as they were to the subtle influences of surroundings, they felt themselves very much alone, when suddenly left unassisted to face the wilderness; a wilderness rendered more strange, more incomprehensible by the mysterious glimpses of the vigorous life it contained. They were two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals, whose existence is only rendered possible through the high organisation of civilised crowds. Few men realise that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and its opinion. But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble to the heart. To the sentiment of being alone of one’s kind, to the clear perception of the loneliness of one’s thoughts, of one’s sensations — to the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous; a suggestion of things vague, uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites the imagination and tries the civilised nerves of the foolish and the wise alike.

Sentence length

Some of the sentences here (particularly the last) are quite long. This is because he is expressing complex ideas or generating a charged atmosphere. These are what some people find difficult to follow. But they are not all long: the first, for instance, dealing with a simple action by characters, is much shorter.

Paragraph length

Conrad’s paragraphs in general are quite long – which was common in the literature of the late nineteenth century. The first part of this paragraph describes what the two characters are doing and what they are feeling; but from the sentence beginning ‘They were two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals’ the paragraph content switches to quasi-philosophic reflections and generalisations about human behaviour.

Narrative mode

This story is written in what’s called the ‘third person omniscient narrative mode’. That is, Conrad tells us what his characters do, what they think, and how they feel. He is in charge of the entire story, and he also provides an account of the inner lives of his characters.

But from the sentence beginning ‘Few men realise …’ the narrative mode changes. The statements which follow – right up to the end of the paragraph – are generalised observations about life and human behaviour. These opinions are not attributed to the characters (who are fairly stupid people anyway) but are offered as if they were universal truths to which any sane person would agree.

Conrad here is slipping into an unacknowledged or disguised form of first person narrative. The opinions about how human beings react to ‘primitive nature and primitive man’ are Conrad’s own opinions – but he offers them in such a subtle and powerful manner that only a careful and alert reader will notice.

Conrad here is being what is called an ‘intrusive narrator’ – weaving his own philosophy of life into the narrative. And because he is the author, in complete charge of the text, he can make his evidence in the events of the story fit the assertions he is offering. Such is the magic of imaginative literature.

But it is worth noting these shifts in narrative mode – particularly in the case of Conrad, because in many of his longer stories and his novels he manipulates the delivery of narratives in an even more complex fashion – and sometimes gets himself into trouble: (see Freya of the Seven Isles, Nostromo, and Chance for instance).

Language

You will probably have noticed that Conrad uses a number of very charged terms in his evocation of milieu in which his two characters find themselves – terms such as ‘irresistible force’, ‘unmitigated savagery’, and ‘negation of the habitual’. What makes these difficult to grasp at first is that he is switching from the very specific and concrete description of the two men and the trading station to an abstract and very general consideration of their condition. This is almost the language of philosophy – and it is certainly a change of register.

The terms ‘force’, ‘savagery’, ‘habitual’, and ‘intrusion’ are all abstract nouns which draw readers’ attention away from the overt ‘story’ and force them to consider rather large scale social reflections on life.

In fact the combination of a rather unusual and powerful adjective qualifying an abstract noun — ‘unmitigated savagery’ and ‘profound trouble’ — is a sort of trade mark of Conrad’s literary style. You will see many other examples in this story and throughout his work in general.

Prose rhythm

In prose fiction rhythm is easier to feel than to define, but it should be fairly clear that Conrad puts a lot of rhythmic emphasis into his writing by his use of alliteration, repetition, and what are called balanced phrases and parallel constructions.

For instance ‘The courage, the composure, the confidence’ is a fairly obvious use of alliteration, with an insistent stress falling on the initial letter c in each of these words (which are all abstract nouns).

He uses both repetition and parallel construction in ‘To the sentiment of being … to the clear perception … to the negation of the habitual …’ – which helps the reader through a very long sentence.

Syntax

The term ‘syntax’ is used to describe the order of words in a sentence and the logic of their connection. These are normally determined by the long traditions and the historical development of the language itself. But Conrad is often given to unusual constructions — such as ‘The director was a man ruthless and efficient’.

This isn’t wrong or grammatically incorrect, but in conventional English adjectives are usually placed before the nouns that they qualify — as in ‘The director was a ruthless and efficient man’.

But English was Conrad’s third language after Polish and French, and he often uses constructions which are influenced by or echoes of his first and second languages.

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Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

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The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

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Joseph Conrad’s writing table

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Further reading

Amar Acheraiou Joseph Conrad and the Reader, London: Macmillan, 2009.

Jacques Berthoud, Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Muriel Bradbrook, Joseph Conrad: Poland’s English Genius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941

Harold Bloom (ed), Joseph Conrad (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, New Yoprk: Chelsea House Publishers, 2010

Hillel M. Daleski , Joseph Conrad: The Way of Dispossession, London: Faber, 1977

Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Aaron Fogel, Coercion to Speak: Conrad’s Poetics of Dialogue, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985

John Dozier Gordon, Joseph Conrad: The Making of a Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1940

Albert J. Guerard, Conrad the Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958

Robert Hampson, Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Language and Fictional Self-Consciousness, London: Edward Arnold, 1979

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Narrative Technique and Ideological Commitment, London: Edward Arnold, 1990

Jeremy Hawthorn, Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad, London: Continuum, 2007.

Owen Knowles, The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990

Jakob Lothe, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008

Gustav Morf, The Polish Shades and Ghosts of Joseph Conrad, New York: Astra, 1976

Ross Murfin, Conrad Revisited: Essays for the Eighties, Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 1985

Jeffery Myers, Joseph Conrad: A Biography, Cooper Square Publishers, 2001.

Zdzislaw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Life, Camden House, 2007.

George A. Panichas, Joseph Conrad: His Moral Vision, Mercer University Press, 2005.

John G. Peters, The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

James Phelan, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008.

Edward Said, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966

Allan H. Simmons, Joseph Conrad: (Critical Issues), London: Macmillan, 2006.

J.H. Stape, The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996

John Stape, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad, Arrow Books, 2008.

Peter Villiers, Joseph Conrad: Master Mariner, Seafarer Books, 2006.

Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, London: Chatto and Windus, 1980

Cedric Watts, Joseph Conrad: (Writers and their Work), London: Northcote House, 1994.

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Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2013

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Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

---

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

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tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Because of the Dollars was written in 1914, and first appeared as part of Joseph Conrad’s collection Within the Tides published by J.M. Dent and Sons in 1915. The other stories in the volume were The Partner, The Inn of the Two Witches, and The Planter of Malata.

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Because of the Dollars – critical commentary

This story features a very typical Conradian dramatic situation – an honourable protagonist in an isolated and vulnerable position, threatened by ruthless villains, and usually with the added complication of a woman on hand for whom the hero feels a gentlemanly sense of responsibility. It’s a situation he used in novels from Lord Jim (1900) to Victory (1915). In this instance there is the additional consideration of a sick child thrown into the plot.

Fortunately for Davidson, he is at least armed with a revolver, and his prime foe the Frenchman has the disadvantage of having no hands. This however does not stop him killing the innocent woman in question, Laughing Anne, who ironically has tied the seven pound weight to his arm stump with which he kills her.

But even after he survives the attempt to rob him of his dollars, his travails are not over. Honourably taking it on himself to look after Laughing Anne’s son Tony, he runs up against the suspicions and ire of his own wife. She suspects that the child is Davidson’s. This is an interesting point, since Laughing Anne is more or less a prostitute, and she does know Davidson from the past. The connection is not impossible, but does not seem to be substantiated by anything else in the text.

Moreover, Mrs Davidson has been flagged up by Hollis earlier in the story as a less than completely sympathetic character:

What I noticed under the superficial aspect of vapid sweetness was her convex, obstinate forehead, and her small, red pretty, ungenerous mouth.

Davidson himself however is universally regarded as ‘a good man’ – so the tale is a cautionary reminder that even good men may suffer misfortune and injustice in pursuit of doing The Right Thing.

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Because of the Dollars – study resources

Because of the Dollars – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

Because of the Dollars – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook –

Because of the Dollars – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

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Because of the Dollars – plot summary

Part I.   An un-named outer narrator and his friend Hollis see captain Davidson on the harbour front of an Eastern port. Hollis relates the background story of his character and life, explaining why he is known as ‘a good man’ . Davidson is the commander of the Sissie , which is owned by a Chinaman. When a new printing of dollars is issued, Davidson collects packages of the old silver dollars from people in the ports where he calls. His wife thinks that transporting currency might be dangerous, but he believes that nobody else can take his place. He also wishes to call on Bamtz, a loafer who has taken up with fellow drifter, Laughing Anne. When Davidson first called at the remote island of Mirrah he was recognised by Anne as an old friend. She explains that she has settled with Bamtz for the sake of her child Tony.

Part II.   In a quayside bar the blackmailer Fector overhears Davidson’s plans to collect in the old dollars, and he recruits thugs Niclaus and the Frenchman (who has no hands). After collecting dollars, Davidson arrives late at night at the Bamtz house to find the three men with Bamtz, waiting for him. Anne’s son Tony is ill with a fever. Whilst she and Davidson attend to him she warns him about the Frenchman, who that day has asked her to tie a seven pound weight to the stumpt of his right arm.

At night the thugs attack the ship to steal the silver, but Davidson is armed with a revolver and scares them off. The Frenchman realises that Anne has given their plans away, and in the melee that ensues he bludgeons her to death with the weight. Davidson feels that she has somehow died to save him, and he feels guilty. However, he rescues the child.

Davidson buries Anne at sea and gives the child to his wife to look after. However, his wife suspects that the child is actually his, and she turns against both of them. Eventually, even though he tells her the whole story, she leaves him and goes back to her parents. The boy is sent to a church school in Malacca, where he eventually does well and plans to become a missionary. Davidson is left alone with nobody – which is where the story began.

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Joseph Conrad – video biography

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Because of the Dollars – principal characters

I	an un-named outer narrator
Hollis	his friend
Davidson	commander of the Sissie
Bamtz	a loafer with a beard
Laughing Anne	a drifter from Saigon – a ‘painted woman’
Fector	a blackmailer and ‘journalist’
Niclaus	a dead beat
the Frenchman	a thug with no hands

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Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

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The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

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Joseph Conrad’s writing table

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Further reading

Amar Acheraiou Joseph Conrad and the Reader, London: Macmillan, 2009.

Jacques Berthoud, Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Muriel Bradbrook, Joseph Conrad: Poland’s English Genius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941

Harold Bloom (ed), Joseph Conrad (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2010

Hillel M. Daleski , Joseph Conrad: The Way of Dispossession, London: Faber, 1977

Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Aaron Fogel, Coercion to Speak: Conrad’s Poetics of Dialogue, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985

John Dozier Gordon, Joseph Conrad: The Making of a Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1940

Albert J. Guerard, Conrad the Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958

Robert Hampson, Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Language and Fictional Self-Consciousness, London: Edward Arnold, 1979

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Narrative Technique and Ideological Commitment, London: Edward Arnold, 1990

Jeremy Hawthorn, Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad, London: Continuum, 2007.

Owen Knowles, The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990

Jakob Lothe, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008

Gustav Morf, The Polish Shades and Ghosts of Joseph Conrad, New York: Astra, 1976

Ross Murfin, Conrad Revisited: Essays for the Eighties, Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 1985

Jeffery Myers, Joseph Conrad: A Biography, Cooper Square Publishers, 2001.

Zdzislaw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Life, Camden House, 2007.

George A. Panichas, Joseph Conrad: His Moral Vision, Mercer University Press, 2005.

John G. Peters, The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

James Phelan, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008.

Edward Said, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966

Allan H. Simmons, Joseph Conrad: (Critical Issues), London: Macmillan, 2006.

J.H. Stape, The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996

John Stape, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad, Arrow Books, 2008.

Peter Villiers, Joseph Conrad: Master Mariner, Seafarer Books, 2006.

Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, London: Chatto and Windus, 1980

Cedric Watts, Joseph Conrad: (Writers and their Work), London: Northcote House, 1994.

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Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2013

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Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

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More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

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tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Freya of the Seven Isles was written in late 1910–early 1911. It was first published in Metropolitan Magazine in early 1912 and in London Magazine for July 1912. It was then collected in ’Twixt Land and Sea, published by J.M.Dent & Sons in 1912. The other tales in the collection were A Smile of Fortune and The Secret Sharer.

Paul Gaugin 1848-1903

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Freya of the Seven Isles – critical commentary

Narrative

Conrad is rightly celebrated as a writer who creates highly wrought narratives with complex time schemes, which are often constructed to produce amazing feats of ironic and tragic drama. The complexity is often created by having both an inner and an outer narrator as sources of information about events and characters, or by having the information assembled in an order which does not follow the actual chronology of events. This can sometimes make extra intellectual demands on the reader – but at their best they carry with them compensating artistic effects of a high order. It is no accident that Conrad (along with his contemporary and friend Henry James) is seen as one of the precursors of the Modernist movement.

However, it has to be said that these complexities of narrative technique are not always kept under control: see comments on Nostromo (1904) and Under Western Eyes (1911) for instance. Conrad sometimes seems to forget who is telling the story, and first person narratives often drift to become an account of events in third person omniscient mode.

In the case of Freya of the Seven Isles there is a breakdown in the logic of the narrative which results in people giving an account of events they have not witnessed or cannot know about. The sequence or chain of knowledge is as follows:

1. The outer narrator receives a letter written to him by someone in the Mesman office in Macassar. The letter mentions Nielsen, which prompts the narrator’s reminiscence.
2. His reminiscence becomes the principal narrative, and the narrator is a participant in events. He is acquainted with Nielsen and Freya.
3. The tale gradually turns into a narrative in third person omniscient mode. That is, it includes the thoughts and feelings of the characters in the tale.
4. When the outer narrator tows Jasper Allen out to sea in Part II, he draws attention to the fact that it is the last time he ever sees Jasper, Nielsen, Freya, and Heemskirk together.
5. This point is reinforced in Part III, when the narrator points out that it is the last time he ever sees Jasper. Yet he knows what Jasper’s secret plans are, later in the tale.
6. At the end of Part III the narrator goes back to London, yet from Part IV onwards, the third person omniscient narrative continues. There are scenes, thoughts, fears, and feelings which cannot have been transmitted to the narrator – for a number of reasons:
   • there is nobody else in the scene to relay the information
   • the subject is missing ((Jasper, Heemskirk)
   • the subject is dead (Freya)
7. Late in the tale, Conrad seems to remember that information about events was prompted by the letter. The narrator observes ‘All this story, read in my friend’s very chatty letter.’ But the information in the letter could only be related to events as seen in Macassar. His friend could not possibly know about Freya’s thoughts and fears when being secretly spied upon by Heemskirk. (for instance).
8. Nielsen visits the narrator in London to reveal the news of Freya’s death – but he too cannot know about the thoughts and feelings of characters in scenes in which he was not present.

What you make of these weaknesses will depend upon your levels of tolerance, but it is worth pointing to them if only because Conrad seems to go out of his way to make his narrative logic and credibility more complex than it needs to be. All of these events could have been conveyed in traditional third person omniscient narrative mode

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Freya of the Seven Isles – study resources

Freya of the Seven Isles – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

Freya of the Seven Isles – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

Freya of the Seven Isles – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

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Freya of the Seven Isles – plot summary

Part I.   The un-named narrator gives an account of Nielsen, a Dane who is an experienced seaman in the Eastern Malayan Archipelago. He is frightened of both the Dutch and the Spanish authorities, and has settled on a remote island. Following the death of his wife, their beautiful daughter Freya goes to live with him on the island.

She is courted by Jasper Allen, the owner of Bonito, a fast and elegant brig, who feels that the narrator might be a rival for Freya. Nielsen is more worried about the authorities than Jasper’s courtship of his daughter. Jasper puts lots of effort into maintaining the brig, regarding it as a potential home for Freya, who he hopes to marry.

Part II.   Nielsen’s hospitality is abused by Heemskirk, the commander of a gunboat, who is also interested in Freya. The narrator counsels Freya to keep Jasper as quiet as possible. She wishes to become mistress of the elegant brig Bonito.

Part III.   A few weeks later the narrator meets Jasper in Singapore. Jasper and Freya are planning to elope, but she wants him to delay until she is twenty-one, which leaves them eleven months left to wait. Jasper has taken on a dubious mate Schultz, who is given to drink and stealing.

The narrator visits Nielsen shortly before Freya’s birthday, immediately following visits from Jasper and Heemskirk, who has been particularly obnoxious. The visit also seems to have upset Freya. The narrator leaves on the eve of the planned elopement, then has to return to England. He writes to both Jasper and Freya but hears nothing in return.

Part IV.   The narrative goes back to Heemskirk’s visit. He annoys Nielsen and provokes his sense of insecurity, especially regarding Freya. He sneaks up, trying to spy on Freya and Jasper. Freya feels she must try to protect both Jasper and her father. Jasper wants to take her away there and then; but she advises caution and waiting. They all have dinner together, then Jasper leaves for his ship accompanied by Nielsen. In their absence a drunken Heemskirk menaces and molests Freya, who ends up smacking his face very hard. When Nielsen returns he naively thinks that Heemskirk has toothache. Neilsen urges Freya not to upset a man who has political influence in the region. In the morning Heemskirk spies on Freya who is watching Jasper’s brig departing – then he slinks off.

Part V.   Heemskirk makes some unspecified political arrangements with the ‘authorities’, then steams out in his gunboat to intercept Jasper in the Bonito. He accuses him of illegal trading, and takes over the brig, towing it towards Macassar. But he deliberately wrecks the brig on a reef at high tide.

Part VI.   The Bonita’s stock of arms has disappeared – which arouses suspicions of illegal arms trading by Jasper. It emerges that the arms were stolen and sold by Schultz, but when he makes his confession to the authorities they refuse to believe him. He ends up cutting his own throat. The brig meanwhile is looted whilst it is stranded on the reef.

Time passes, and the outer narrator is in London when he is visited by Nielsen, who fills in the rest of the tale.

After getting news of the wreck of the Bonito, Freya becomes ill, then tells her father everything about the elopement plan. Nielsen goes to see Jasper, who is in terminal despair. Nielsen sells up and takes Freya to live in Hong Kong. She reproaches herself for not being more courageous and dies of pneumonia.

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Joseph Conrad – video biography

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Freya of the Seven Isles – main characters

I	the un-named narrator
Nielsen	a Danish widower
Freya	his attractive daughter
Jasper Allen	English owner of the fast brig Bonito
Heemskirk	Dutch commander of the gunboat Neptun
Schultz	a drunken and kleptomaniac mate

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First edition – J.M.Dent & Sons 1912

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The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

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Joseph Conrad’s writing table

---

Further reading

Amar Acheraiou Joseph Conrad and the Reader, London: Macmillan, 2009.

Jacques Berthoud, Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Muriel Bradbrook, Joseph Conrad: Poland’s English Genius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941

Harold Bloom (ed), Joseph Conrad (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2010

Hillel M. Daleski , Joseph Conrad: The Way of Dispossession, London: Faber, 1977

Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Aaron Fogel, Coercion to Speak: Conrad’s Poetics of Dialogue, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985

John Dozier Gordon, Joseph Conrad: The Making of a Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1940

Albert J. Guerard, Conrad the Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958

Robert Hampson, Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Language and Fictional Self-Consciousness, London: Edward Arnold, 1979

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Narrative Technique and Ideological Commitment, London: Edward Arnold, 1990

Jeremy Hawthorn, Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad, London: Continuum, 2007.

Owen Knowles, The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990

Jakob Lothe, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008

Gustav Morf, The Polish Shades and Ghosts of Joseph Conrad, New York: Astra, 1976

Ross Murfin, Conrad Revisited: Essays for the Eighties, Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 1985

Jeffery Myers, Joseph Conrad: A Biography, Cooper Square Publishers, 2001.

Zdzislaw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Life, Camden House, 2007.

George A. Panichas, Joseph Conrad: His Moral Vision, Mercer University Press, 2005.

John G. Peters, The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

James Phelan, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008.

Edward Said, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966

Allan H. Simmons, Joseph Conrad: (Critical Issues), London: Macmillan, 2006.

J.H. Stape, The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996

John Stape, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad, Arrow Books, 2008.

Peter Villiers, Joseph Conrad: Master Mariner, Seafarer Books, 2006.

Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, London: Chatto and Windus, 1980

Cedric Watts, Joseph Conrad: (Writers and their Work), London: Northcote House, 1994.

---

Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2013

---

Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

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More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

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tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Gaspar Ruiz was written shortly after Nostromo in 1904–5. It was published in The Strand Magazine in 1906, and collected in A Set of Six, published in 1908 (UK) and 1915 (US). The other stories in this collection of Joseph Conrad’s work were The Informer, The Brute, The Duel, Il Conde, and An Anarchist. This story was the only piece of Conrad’s fiction ever adapted by the author for cinema, as Gaspar the Strong Man, 1920.

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Gaspar Ruiz – critical commentary

In the ‘Author’s Note’ which acts as an introductory essay to A Set of Six in which this tale appears, Conrad observes that he wrote the story within a month of finishing Nostromo, and claims that ‘apart from the locality … the novel and the story have nothing in common, neither mood, nor intention and, certainly, not the style’. This statement just serves to illustrate the observation made by D.H.Lawrence that we should ‘trust the tale, not the teller’.

Gaspar Ruiz is so similar to Nostromo that it could almost be unused section from the novel. Quite apart from the Latin-American setting, it has more of the characteristics of a novel than a story – or even a tale.

There are simply too many large scale events which obtrude and disrupt such a short piece of fiction. There is a firing squad execution; a miraculous survival; an earthquake; a switching of political allegiance; a changing geographic location; an undramatised rise from poverty to large scale political success; an almost ludicrous man-cannon merger; a death and a suicide. This is all too much for even the most elastic of literary forms – the tale – to bear.

Conrad also seeks to justify the content of his tale with the most threadbare appeals to verisimilitude in his introduction. He claims that the character of Gaspar Ruiz comes from a documentary source:

The curious who may be mistrusting my imagination are referred to that printed document, Vol. II, I forget the page, but it is somewhere not far from the end.

And the final semi-ludicrous episode of Ruiz having the cannon strapped to his back is justified on even thinner grounds:

the gun episode did really happen, or at least I am bound to believe it because I remember it, described in an extremely matter-of-fact tone, in some book I read in my boyhood; and I am not going to discard the beliefs of my boyhood for anybody on earth.

These remarks might in fact be tongue-in-cheek – Conrad throwing sops out to the reading public that ‘these things really did happen, and I have proof’. But as contemporary readers we are fully justified in disatending completely to these claims – be they true or not. The fact is that these disparate dramatic incidents do not add up to a coherent whole or a satisfactory narrative composition.

It is not the a-chronological arrangement of their elements which is in question. Most of the information comes to the reader from Santierra’s account, though as is common in Conrad’s work, there are frequent drifts into third-person omniscient narrative mode.

In fact the narrative begins in third person omniscient narrative mode; then it shifts into first person narrative mode as Santierra takes over the story. Later when Gaspar Ruiz is escaping from under a pile of dead bodies, Conrad is forced back into third person mode in order to give an account of his feelings and wishes.

A novel such as Nostromo is a large scale account of complex characters and events – a novel of the type that Henry James described as ‘loose baggy monsters’. That is, it can incorporate all sorts of digressions, over-dramatic episodes, and non-essential characters without losing credibility. The same cannot be said for Gaspar Ruiz.

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Gaspar Ruiz – study resources

A Set of Six – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

A Set of Six – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

A Set of Six – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

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Gaspar Ruiz – plot summary

Part I.   Gaspar Ruiz joined the republican forces during a revolutionary war in an un-named South American country. He was captured by the Royalist forces and forced to bear arms. Having been recaptured by the republicans, he is about to be shot as a deserter and a traitor.

Part II.   The detainees are locked in a cellar before being executed later in the day. When they need water, buckets cannot be passed through the window bars. Lieutenant Santierra, sends for the door key, but the officer in charge is having his siesta.

Part III.   The story flashes forwards fifty years as Santierra, now a General, recalls his youthful chagrin. He has organised a delay in the executions, but now seems to have made matters worse. Gaspar Ruiz persuades him to release his tied hands.

Part IV.   The soldiers think Gaspar Ruiz is trying to escape: Santierra has to deflect an attempt to shoot him. But Gaspar Ruiz bends the window bars and distributes water to the prisoners. Later the same day he goes meekly to be executed, along with the other prisoners.

Part V.   Bullets hit Gaspar Ruiz, but they do not kill him.He remains motionless beneath a pile of bodies. A soldier slashes his neck with a sword, but this does not kill him either. He escapes at night and hides in a nearby house.

Part VI.   Santierra then recounts (many years later) the story of the old Royalist and his daughter Donna Ermina in whose house Gaspar Ruiz sought refuge. The old man is Spanish and has lost everything in the revolution, and has become deranged. They hide Gaspar Ruiz in a shed.

Part VII.   Gaspar Ruiz recovers slowly, but he realises that he cannot go anywhere without the fear of recapture and almost certain execution.

Part VIII.   Santierra patrols this same area and passes the house each night. He talks to the girl, who tells him that Gaspar Ruiz wants safe passage and seeks an audience with a senior commander to explain his case. Santierra and his colleague Robles head an attempt to arrest Ruiz that night, but when they get to the house there is an earthquake. Ruiz saves the lives of Robles and Santierra, then rescues Donna Ermina from the wreckage and escapes.

Part IX.   Santierra and his troops are guarding the destroyed town against looters. When Santierra moves to Santiago, Gaspar Ruiz turns up there again, and conducts a successful raid against the Royalists as proof of his adherence to the revolutionary cause. Its leader, San Martin, makes him a captain as a reward. He is appointed to protect the southern border whilst the army takes the revolutionary war into Peru.

Part X.   Gaspar Ruiz establishes his own army, goes from strength to strength, and under the influence of Donna Ermina reverts to the Royalist cause, calling himself Colonel of the King of Spain The revolutionaries return from success in Peru, but they fail to capture him.

Part XI.   Ruiz sends his wife and child over the mountains to safety, but they are betrayed and arrested. Santierra is captured by Ruiz’s men, but he is spared because Ruiz recognises him. He uses him as a negotiator to attempt a recovery of Donna Ermina and his child from a fortress where they are being held. All attempts to attack the fortress fail, and when a cannon is requisitioned it arrives without any firing platform. Gaspar Ruiz has the cannon fastened to his own back so it can be fired at the fortress – a strategy which kills him.

Part XII.   Santierra is given the task of escorting Donna Ermina and her child. As a well-known Royalist, Donna Ermina is very fearful of what will happen to her. She gives the child to Santierra, then throws herself off a cliff. Santierra later adopts the child as his own daughter, and makes her his heiress.

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Joseph Conrad – video biography

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Gaspar Ruiz – principal characters

Lieutenant Santierra	officer in army of liberation – becomes a general
Gaspar Ruiz	a simple and very strong peasant
Dona Erminia	daughter of a royalist
General Robles	revolutionary commander

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Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

---

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

---

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

---

Further reading

Amar Acheraiou Joseph Conrad and the Reader, London: Macmillan, 2009.

Jacques Berthoud, Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Muriel Bradbrook, Joseph Conrad: Poland’s English Genius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941

Harold Bloom (ed), Joseph Conrad (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, New Yoprk: Chelsea House Publishers, 2010

Hillel M. Daleski , Joseph Conrad: The Way of Dispossession, London: Faber, 1977

Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Aaron Fogel, Coercion to Speak: Conrad’s Poetics of Dialogue, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985

John Dozier Gordon, Joseph Conrad: The Making of a Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1940

Albert J. Guerard, Conrad the Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958

Robert Hampson, Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Language and Fictional Self-Consciousness, London: Edward Arnold, 1979

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Narrative Technique and Ideological Commitment, London: Edward Arnold, 1990

Jeremy Hawthorn, Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad, London: Continuum, 2007.

Owen Knowles, The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990

Jakob Lothe, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008

Gustav Morf, The Polish Shades and Ghosts of Joseph Conrad, New York: Astra, 1976

Ross Murfin, Conrad Revisited: Essays for the Eighties, Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 1985

Jeffery Myers, Joseph Conrad: A Biography, Cooper Square Publishers, 2001.

Zdzislaw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Life, Camden House, 2007.

George A. Panichas, Joseph Conrad: His Moral Vision, Mercer University Press, 2005.

John G. Peters, The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

James Phelan, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008.

Edward Said, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966

Allan H. Simmons, Joseph Conrad: (Critical Issues), London: Macmillan, 2006.

J.H. Stape, The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996

John Stape, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad, Arrow Books, 2008.

Peter Villiers, Joseph Conrad: Master Mariner, Seafarer Books, 2006.

Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, London: Chatto and Windus, 1980

Cedric Watts, Joseph Conrad: (Writers and their Work), London: Northcote House, 1994.

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Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2013

---

Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

---

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

---

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Il Conde first appeared in Cassell’s Magazine in London (1908) and Hampton’s Magazine in New York (1909). It was later collected in A Set of Six, published in 1908 (UK) and 1915 (US). The other stories in this collection of Joseph Conrad’s work were The Informer, An Anarchist, Gaspar Ruiz, The Duel, and The Brute.

“Vedi Napoli e poi mori”

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Il Conde – critical commentary

In his prefatory notes to A Set of Six Conrad outlines the genesis of his stories, putting his emphasis on the fact that they are based on true incidents:

In all of them the facts are inherently true, by which I mean that they are not only possible but that they have actually happened. For instance, the last story in the volume, the one I call Pathetic, whose first title is Il Conde (misspelt by-the-by) is an almost verbatim transcript of the tale told me by a very charming old gentleman whom I met in Italy.

It is curious (with over a hundred years’ hindsight) that he should think that the ‘real’ origins of the tale lend credibility (and even artistic merit) to what is not much more than an anecdote. It is indeed rather shocking if an elderly and cultivated man is held up at knife point and robbed by a university student from a wealthy family who is also connected to a Mafia-style gang. But since nothing further is made of this confrontation (and contradiction) it’s not clear what point is being made. The elderly man is so shocked he returns to somewhere in middle Europe – but that is all. Conrad goes on to say that the tale concerns a ‘problem’ – but then admits that he’s not sure what it is:

Anybody can see that it is something more than a verbatim report, but where he left off and where I began must be left to the acute discrimination of the reader who may be interested in the problem. I don’t mean to say that the problem is worth the trouble. What I am certain of, however, is that it is not to be solved, for I am not at all clear about it myself by this time.

The tale is an anecdote, a character sketch, an evocation of time and place, but not much more. It lacks the biting irony of An Outpost of Progress or the terrible themes of Falk and Amy Foster. We cannot expect every one of Conrad’s tales to be equally powerful, and it is fairly clear that his greatest literary strength lay as a novelist and a writer of novellas, not as an artist of the shorter literary forms.

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Il Conde – study resources

A Set of Six – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

A Set of Six – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

A Set of Six – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

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Il Conde – plot summary

An un-named narrator describes the Count he meets at his hotel in Naples. He is a cultivated, rich, and sympathetic character, yet the narrator does not know his name or where he is from. The narrator leaves for ten days to look after a friend who is ill. When he returns the Count tells him about an unpleasant experience.

The Count goes after dinner to listen to music played in a public garden. Afterwards he strolls on a darkened boulevard, where a man robs him at knife point. He gives him his money and watch, but refuses to give him his rings.

Afterwards, the Count retreats to a cafe, where he sees his attacker again at a nearby table. He asks a cigarette vendor for information and is told that the young man is a university student from a very good family and the head of a Camorra (Mafia-style gang). The young man threatens to pursue him further, so the Count decides to leave Naples, even though he believes that its climate is necessary for his health. The narrator sees him off on a train bound for Vienna.

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Joseph Conrad – video biography

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Principal characters

I	the un-named narrator
Il Conde	a cultivated traveller
—	a young man

---

Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

---

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

---

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

---

Further reading

Amar Acheraiou Joseph Conrad and the Reader, London: Macmillan, 2009.

Jacques Berthoud, Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Muriel Bradbrook, Joseph Conrad: Poland’s English Genius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941

Harold Bloom (ed), Joseph Conrad (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, New Yoprk: Chelsea House Publishers, 2010

Hillel M. Daleski , Joseph Conrad: The Way of Dispossession, London: Faber, 1977

Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Aaron Fogel, Coercion to Speak: Conrad’s Poetics of Dialogue, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985

John Dozier Gordon, Joseph Conrad: The Making of a Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1940

Albert J. Guerard, Conrad the Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958

Robert Hampson, Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Language and Fictional Self-Consciousness, London: Edward Arnold, 1979

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Narrative Technique and Ideological Commitment, London: Edward Arnold, 1990

Jeremy Hawthorn, Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad, London: Continuum, 2007.

Owen Knowles, The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990

Jakob Lothe, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008

Gustav Morf, The Polish Shades and Ghosts of Joseph Conrad, New York: Astra, 1976

Ross Murfin, Conrad Revisited: Essays for the Eighties, Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 1985

Jeffery Myers, Joseph Conrad: A Biography, Cooper Square Publishers, 2001.

Zdzislaw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Life, Camden House, 2007.

George A. Panichas, Joseph Conrad: His Moral Vision, Mercer University Press, 2005.

John G. Peters, The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

James Phelan, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008.

Edward Said, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966

Allan H. Simmons, Joseph Conrad: (Critical Issues), London: Macmillan, 2006.

J.H. Stape, The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996

John Stape, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad, Arrow Books, 2008.

Peter Villiers, Joseph Conrad: Master Mariner, Seafarer Books, 2006.

Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, London: Chatto and Windus, 1980

Cedric Watts, Joseph Conrad: (Writers and their Work), London: Northcote House, 1994.

---

Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2013

---

Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

---

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

---

tutorial, commentary, characters, and study resources

Karain: A Memory was written in February-April 1897 and published in the November 1897 issue of Blackwood’s Magazine. Its first appearance in book form was as part of Tales of Unrest published by in 1898, which was Conrad’s first collection of stories. The other stories in the book were The Idiots, An Outpost of Progress, The Return, and The Lagoon.

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Karain: A Memory – plot summary

Part I.   An un-named narrator describes the first visit of his schooner to the small fiefdom of Karain in an isolated part of the Malayan archipelago. Karain is a colourful and confident leader who the narrator likens to an actor. He is surrounded by loyal followers, and he buys illegally-traded guns and ammunition from the narrator.

Part II.   At night Karain visits the schooner, always with an armed attendant at his back. He asks the narrator questions about Queen Victoria and tells him about his own mother who was a local ruler: he is her son from a second marriage. Once he was attacked by natives from beyond the nearby mountains but he killed most of the attackers and the rest never came back. He dispenses justice amongst his `people’, is much revered, and enjoys huge banquets.

Part III.   The narrator visits him for two years, perceives him to be planning a war, and tries to warn him about forces beyond his own domain; but he fails to understand such concepts. On the occasion of his last visit the chief’s old henchman has died and Karain himself is ill. The trade in munitions takes place, then there is a tropical storm.

Karain suddenly appears on the schooner, having swum to the ship after escaping from his stockade. He fears that some invisible spirit is pursuing him, and he wants the crew to take him away.

Part IV.   Karain relates how a Dutchman set up home in the locality of his friend Pata Malara. Then Malara`s sister joins the Dutchman, bringing dishonour onto her family. When the Dutchman leaves with the sister, Malara decides to follow and strike vengeance. Karain decides to go with him out of loyalty to his friend. They sail to Java and go on an extended and fruitless search which lasts for two years or more.

Karain falls in love with the image of Malara`s sister who they are hunting down. Eventually they find them both, whereupon Malara wants to kill his sister to avenge the family`s honour. He gives Karain a gun to shoot the Dutchman, but instead Karain shoots his friend Malara.

Part V.   Karain runs away and survives in a forest, but he is visited by the ghost of Malara. He moves on and meets an old man who becomes his henchman, protecting him from `the dead’. But now that old man has died Karain has become vulnerable again to spirits. He thinks he will be safe amongst people who do not believe in the spirit world. He wants them to provide him with a weapon or charm against his demon.

Part VI.   Hollis produces a box containing a sixpence which bears Queen Victoria`s head. He makes it into a charm, then they present it to Karain and convince him it will keep the spirit at bay. Karain goes back to his people.

The story ends with the narrator meeting Jackson in London some years later, and they recall Karain amidst the bustle of the capital city.

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Study resources

Tales of Unrest – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

Tales of Unrest – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

Tales of Unrest – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

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Karain: A Memory – principal characters

—	an un-named narrator
Karain	a war lord of three coastal villages, originally from Les Celebes
Pata Malara	Karain’s friend
Hollis	a young mate
Jackson	an old guitar-playing sailor

---

Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

---

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

---

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

---

Further reading

Amar Acheraiou Joseph Conrad and the Reader, London: Macmillan, 2009.

Jacques Berthoud, Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Muriel Bradbrook, Joseph Conrad: Poland’s English Genius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941

Harold Bloom (ed), Joseph Conrad (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, New Yoprk: Chelsea House Publishers, 2010

Hillel M. Daleski , Joseph Conrad: The Way of Dispossession, London: Faber, 1977

Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Aaron Fogel, Coercion to Speak: Conrad’s Poetics of Dialogue, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985

John Dozier Gordon, Joseph Conrad: The Making of a Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1940

Albert J. Guerard, Conrad the Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958

Robert Hampson, Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Language and Fictional Self-Consciousness, London: Edward Arnold, 1979

Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Narrative Technique and Ideological Commitment, London: Edward Arnold, 1990

Jeremy Hawthorn, Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad, London: Continuum, 2007.

Owen Knowles, The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990

Jakob Lothe, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008

Gustav Morf, The Polish Shades and Ghosts of Joseph Conrad, New York: Astra, 1976

Ross Murfin, Conrad Revisited: Essays for the Eighties, Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 1985

Jeffery Myers, Joseph Conrad: A Biography, Cooper Square Publishers, 2001.

Zdzislaw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Life, Camden House, 2007.

George A. Panichas, Joseph Conrad: His Moral Vision, Mercer University Press, 2005.

John G. Peters, The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

James Phelan, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008.

Edward Said, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966

Allan H. Simmons, Joseph Conrad: (Critical Issues), London: Macmillan, 2006.

J.H. Stape, The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996

John Stape, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad, Arrow Books, 2008.

Peter Villiers, Joseph Conrad: Master Mariner, Seafarer Books, 2006.

Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, London: Chatto and Windus, 1980

Cedric Watts, Joseph Conrad: (Writers and their Work), London: Northcote House, 1994.

---

Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2013

---

Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

---

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

---