Joseph Conrad Collection Series

Jim, a young British seaman, becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the hajj. When the ship starts rapidly taking on water and disaster seems imminent, Jim joins his captain and other crew members in abandoning the ship and its passengers. A few days later, they are picked up by a British ship. However, the Patna and its passengers are later also saved, and the reprehensible actions of the crew are exposed. The other participants evade the judicial court of inquiry, leaving Jim to the court alone. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel follows his later attempts at coming to terms with his past. The novel is counted as one of 100 best books of the 20th century.

Five men sit around a mahogany table, drinking claret. As the wine loosens their tongues, one tells a story from his youth, recounting the strange voyage of the doomed ship Judea. Inspired by Conrad's own experiences at sea, Youth is a haunting tale about ill omens, the passing of time and the making of a man. It was based on Joseph Conrad's own experiences sailing in the Far East, and in it he captures a young man's exhilaration in the face of danger and the unknown.

Heart of Darkness is about a narrated voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State in the so-called Heart of Africa. Charles Marlow, the narrator, tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. This setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of his obsession with the ivory trader Kurtz, which enables Conrad to create a parallel between what Conrad calls "the greatest town on earth", London, and Africa as places of darkness. Heart of Darkness has been considered for most of this century as a literary classic, and also as a powerful indictment of the evils of imperialism.

The story is about an old, widowed, merchant-service captain, Henry Whalley, famous in his younger days as dare-devil Harry Whalley, captain of the clipper Condor. Although saving all his life, he had lost almost all to a banking collapse, having just enough to buy a barque, the Fair Maid, ‘to play with’ in his retirement. A letter from his daughter requesting financial help is the catalyst that changes Whalley’s course. He sells his ship, sends his daughter the requested money and to support himself and preserve his remaining capital, enters into partnership with Massy, about whom he has serious doubts. The bargain with Massy makes him shareholder and Captain of the steamer Sofala. Massy had paid for the Sofala with a lottery win; now in debt, he hopes for another lucky number. As an engineer, he knows but does not reveal the true state of the vessel. He hopes for more money from Whalley, but Whalley does not reveal he has none. Whalley begins to lose his sight; should he back out of the agreement, Massey could delay repayment for a year. If Whalley can just hide his failing eyesight a bit longer the agreement will end and he can leave with his money.

In the only novel Conrad set in London, The Secret Agent communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by Verloc, a Russian spy working for the police, and ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho. His masters instruct him to discredit the anarchists in a humiliating fashion, and when his evil plan goes horribly awry, Verloc must deal with the repercussions of his actions. While rooted in the Edwardian period, Conrad's tale remains strikingly contemporary, with its depiction of Londoners gripped by fear of the terrorists living in their midst.

In the story Tomorrow by Joseph Conrad, Captain Hagberd plans what he will do when his son, Harry who has been away at the sea for 16 years comes back. He hopes to marry him to the sweet girl who lives in the neighbourhood. After his wife passes away he redoubles his efforts to find his son. He tells himself every day that his son will return tomorrow. He lives in the little seaport of Colebrook and hopes that his son will return to the place where he stayed once. He builds two small cottages. He prepares one for his son's return and lets out the other to his tenants, an old blind man and his daughter Bessie. Initially the local people make fun of him but they accept his ways and his unusual attire in the course of time. They pity him. When the young man comes home unexpectedly many secrets about the characters in the story are revealed. The story tells about the lives of three characters, the father Captain Hagberd, the wild son who returns home from America and the girl who stays next door, who dreams of being released from her hellish existence.

Peyrol is a Master-Gunner French Republican Navy and a pirate. He longs to escape his violent life and settle down on a farm far away from the ocean and the violence he has known all his life. This struggle for freedom and peace plays out against the backdrop of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s rise to power. Peyrol must fight for redemption and dignity on this his final voyage. The Rover is the last completed novel by Joseph Conrad, written between 1921 and 1922.

Typhoon is a classic sea story, possibly based upon Conrad's actual experience of seaman's life, and probably on a real incident aboard of the real steamer John P. Best. It describes how Captain MacWhirr sails the Siamese steamer Nan-Shan into a typhoon—a mature tropical cyclone of the northwestern part of the Pacific Ocean. Other characters include the young Jukes - most probably an "alter ego" of Conrad from the time he had sailed under captain John McWhir - and Solomon Rout, the chief engineer. The novel classically evokes the seafaring life at the turn of the century. While Macwhirr, who, according to Conrad, "never walked on this Earth" - is emotionally estranged from his family and crew, and though he refuses to consider an alternate course to skirt the typhoon, his indomitable will in the face of a superior natural force elicits grudging admiration.

A poor emigrant from Central Europe sailing from Hamburg to America is shipwrecked off the coast of England. The residents of nearby villages, at first unaware of the sinking, and hence of the possibility of survivors, regard him as a dangerous tramp and madman. He speaks no English; his strange foreign language frightens them, and they offer him no assistance.Eventually "Yanko Goorall" (as rendered in English spelling) is given shelter and employment by an eccentric old local, Mr. Swaffer. Yanko learns a little English. He explains that his given name Yanko means "little John" and that he was a mountaineer (a resident of a mountain area a Goorall), hence his surname. The story's narrator reveals that Yanko hailed from the Carpathian Mountains.Yanko falls in love with Amy Foster, a servant girl who has shown him some kindness. To the community's disapproval, they marry. The couple live in a cottage given to Yanko by Swaffer for having saved his granddaughter's life. Yanko and Amy have a son whom Amy calls Johnny (after Little John). Amy, a simple woman, is troubled by Yanko's behavior, particularly his trying to teach their son to pray with him in his "disturbing" language.Several months later Yanko falls severely ill and, suffering from a fever, begins raving in his native language. Amy, frightened, takes their child and flees for her life. Next morning Yanko dies of heart failure. It transpires that he had simply been asking in his native language for water.

These five stories were collected and published as Tales of Unrest in 1898, shortly before Heart of Darkness, the first of Conrad’s major novels. Ranging from the faraway and unfamiliar, where the acquisitiveness of colonial adventure is damningly exposed, to an ostensibly ordinary London household, these disparate tales display Conrad’s ability to explore and lay bare human nature. Set in Central Africa, ‘An Outpost of Progress’ is suffused with irony and represents a ruthlessly mocking view of European imperialism. ‘Karain’ and ‘The Lagoon’ are exotic tales of the Malay Archipelago, with the former telling of disharmony and discord between Western traders and the indigenous inhabitants. ‘The Return’ recounts the story of, in the author’s own words, “a desirable middle-class town residence which somehow manages to produce a sinister effect”.