Conrad first experiences English literature through his father’s translations of Shakespeare. (His first two languages are Polish and French.)

1869Conrad’s father dies, also of tuberculosis; Conrad is adopted by his maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, who lives in Poland. The completion of the Suez Canal effectively links the Mediterranean and Red Seas.
1874Conrad sets off for Marseilles to become a seaman in the French merchant marine; his first voyage is to Martinique on the Mont Blanc.
1878An indebted Conrad attempts suicide by shooting himself in the chest. He subsequently signs on with the British merchant navy. Following Henry Morton Stanley’s exploration of the region, King Leopold II of Belgium claims ownership of the Congo, founding the Comité d‘Etudes du Haut-Congo (later the Associa tion Internationale du Congo); Leopold takes this action pri vately, not on behalf of Belgium.
1881Conrad sails to the Far East on the Palestine, a bark of 425 tons. On this two-year voyage, the Palestine’s cargo of coal catches fire and must be abandoned. Conrad is forced to navigate an open
boat for more than thirteen hours, until finally landing on an island near Sumatra. Conrad will draw on this experience when he writes the story “Youth” (for more, see the Introduction).
1883Conrad ships as second mate on the Riversdale, then boards the Narcissus at Bombay; he will later translate this experience into the novel The Nigger of the “Narcissus.”
1884Conrad becomes a first mate.
1885The Association Internationale du Congo obtains 450 treaties with African tribal chiefs, as well as the recognition of statehood by America, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Portugal, and Russia. The Congo Free State is formed, with Leopold II as its sovereign.
1886Conrad becomes a British subject and earns his master’s certifi cate from the Board of Trade.
1889Conrad begins writing Almayer’s Folly.
1890Conrad embarks on a four-month voyage along the Congo River on a steamboat. During this period he keeps a diary, which he will later use when he writes Heart of Darkness. He returns to Brussels exhausted, ill with malaria, and profoundly disturbed by what he has experienced in the Congo.
1894Conrad concludes his sea career and begins writing full time. His uncle dies, leaving him £1,600. Conrad begins socializing with a literary circle that includes the critic Edward Garnett, John Galsworthy, Henry James, and Stephen Crane.
1895Joseph Conrad formally adopts his pen name, and his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, is published.
1896Conrad settles permanently in England and marries twenty-two year-old Jessie George, with whom he will have two sons. His sec ond novel, An Outcast of the Islands, is published.
1897Conrad’s novel The Nigger of the “Narcissus” is published.
1898“Youth” is published in the September issue of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Tales of Unrest, his first volume of short stories, is published. The Conrad family moves to Pent Farm, near the coast of Kent, England. Conrad’s son Borys is born.
1899Heart of Darkness is published, as The Heart of Darkness, in the February, March, and April issues of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.
1900Conrad’s novel Lord Jim is published.
1901“Amy Foster” is published in the Illustrated London News, December 14-28. Conrad collaborates with Ford Madox Ford; the result is The Inheritors.
1902Edward Garnett favorably reviews Heart of Darkness upon its ini tial publication in book form in Youth: A Narrative; and Two Other Stories.
1903Conrad publishes Typhoon and Other Stories, which includes “Amy Foster.” Romance, his second collaboration with Ford Madox Ford, is published. Roger Casement, a British consul to the Congo Free State, solicits Conrad’s support to expose the atrocities of Leopold’s rule over the Congo.
1904Conrad’s novel Nostromo is published.
1906Conrad’s son John is born.
1907Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent is published.
1908Following international outcry about the treatment of the Con golese under Leopold’s Congo Free State, Belgium annexes the country, establishing the Belgian Congo. The worst abuses are gradually diminished, but the region remains a resource for Euro pean exploitation, with little provision for the well-being of its people.
1910“The Secret Sharer” is published, as “The Secret-Sharer,” in the August and September issues of Harper’s Magazine.
1911Conrad publishes the novel Under Western Eyes, following a ner vous breakdown.
1912Conrad’s memoir A Personal Record and ’Twixt Land and Sea, a short-story collection that includes “The Secret Sharer,” are pub lished.
1914Conrad enjoys popular success for the first time as his novel Chance becomes a bestseller. World War I erupts during the Conrads’ visit to Poland.
1915Conrad’s novel Victory is published.
1917Conrad’s novella The Shadow-Line is published.
19211920- Collected editions of Conrad’s works are published by Double day, Page (in America) and Heinemann (in Britain).
1923Conrad undertakes a reading tour in the United States.
1924A rheumatic Conrad refuses an offer of knighthood a few months before he succumbs to a fatal heart attack.
1926Conrad’s volume Last Essays is posthumously published.
1958The Congo forms its first parliamentary government.
1960The Congo wins its independence from Belgium.
1979Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, a movie largely inspired by Heart of Darkness, premieres.

INTRODUCTION

While engaged in the mundane chore of packing ivory tusks into casks, in his second week in the Congo as an employee of a Belgian company, Joseph Conrad could hardly have dreamed that the events of the next six months would provide him with the basis for one of the most influential works of fiction of the modern era. In fact, at the time, in June 1890, he felt this task to be “idiotic employment” (Conrad, “The Congo Diary,” p. 161; see “For Further Reading”), an impression he recorded in a journal that is one of the earliest samples of his writing in the English language as well as a document that demonstrates how closely aspects of Heart of Darkness are based on his own experiences. Perhaps it was the unpleasant memory of his physical contact with the coveted substance for which the Congo region was being plundered that would lead him, twenty-seven years later, to make clear that he did not profit from the endeavor materially but only artistically: two stories, one of which was Heart of Darkness, he maintained, “are all the spoil I brought out from the centre of Africa, where, really, I had no sort of business” (Author’s Note, p. 4). Conrad was not yet a writer in 1890, although he had a year earlier tentatively begun work on what would eventually become his first novel, based partly on his observations in the Malay Archipelago. His relatively late start, however, was essential to his success, for by the time he began he had amassed a wealth of experiences of the sort that most other writers could only imagine. In fact, while Heart of Darkness is the best-known instance of Conrad’s penchant for transforming personal experiences into fiction, it is only one of numerous such works by this prolific author. By presenting this novella along with several of Conrad’s finest short stories—“Youth,” “Amy Foster,” and “The Secret Sharer,” each of which also draws on his travels and observations from around the world—the current volume aims to facilitate an appreciation of the diverse fruits of his genius.

Life and Career

In an essay written shortly after Conrad’s death in 1924, Virginia Woolf copiously praised her fellow novelist’s artistry. Yet even though Conrad had been naturalized as a British subject nearly four decades earlier, the quintessentially English Woolf viewed this Polish émigré, who “spoke English with a strong foreign accent,” as a “guest” in Britain. She further described him as “compound of two men,” as one who was “at once inside and out,” and who was therefore possessed of a penetrating “double vision” (Woolf, Collected Essays, pp.