Lord Jim

by Joseph Conrad

Overview

Jim is a young, good-looking, genial, and naive water-clerk on the Patna, a cargo ship plying Asian waters. He is, we are told, 'the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck'. He also harbours romantic fantasies of adventure and heroism - which are promptly scuttled one night when the ship collides with an obstacle and begins to sink. Acting on impulse, Jim jumps overboard and lands in a lifeboat, which happens to be bearing the unscrupulous captain and his cohorts away from the disaster. The Patna, however, manages to stay afloat. The foundering vessel is towed into port - and since the officers have strategically vanished, Jim is left to stand trial for abandoning the ship and its 800 passengers. This edition contains extensive overviews of both the author and the novel.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940011937200
Publisher:	eBookEden.com
Publication date:	10/11/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	388 KB

About the Author

Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish novelist, writing in English, while living in England. Many critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in the English language, despite his not having learned to speak English fluently until he was in his twenties (and then always with a strong Polish accent). He became a naturalized British subject in 1886. He wrote stories and novels, predominantly with a nautical setting, that depicted the heroism of faith before the imperatives of duty, social responsibility and honor. Conrad is recognized as a master prose stylist. Some of his works have a strain of romanticism, but more importantly he is recognized as an important forerunner of modernist literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many writers, including Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Graham Greene, Malcolm Lowry, William S. Burroughs, Joseph Heller, V.S. Naipaul, Italo Calvino, Hunter S. Thompson, and J. M. Coetzee. Conrad’s novels and stories have also inspired such films as Sabotage (1936, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, adapted from Conrad’s The Secret Agent); Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979, adapted from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness); The Duellists (a 1977 Ridley Scott adaptation of Conrad’s The Duel, from A Set of Six); and a 1996 film inspired by The Secret Agent, starring Bob Hoskins, Patricia Arquette and Gérard Depardieu. Writing during the apex of the British Empire, Conrad drew upon his experiences serving in the French and later the British Merchant Navy to create novels and short stories that reflected aspects of a worldwide empire while also plumbing the depths of the human soul.

Date of Birth:

December 3, 1857

Date of Death:

August 3, 1924

Place of Birth:

Berdiczew, Podolia, Russia

Place of Death:

Bishopsbourne, Kent, England

Education:

Tutored in Switzerland. Self-taught in classical literature. Attended maritime school in Marseilles, France