Youth and Two Other Stories ('Heart of Darkness' and 'the End of the Tether')

Garden City, NY: Doubleday Page & Company. Good+. 1923. Hardcover. Good+: shows indications of careful use; light wear to the extremities but with a mild bump to the lower corner of the front panel; former owner's name and place inscribed in ink at the upper corner of the front free endpaper; mild rubbing to the panels; the binding leans slightly but remains secure; the text is clean. Free of creased or dog-eared pages in the text. Free of any underlining, hi-lighting or marginalia or marks in the text. A handsome reading copy, structurally sound and tightly bound, showing minor flaws. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. (7.8 x 5.25 x 1.1 Inches) . Introduction by William McFee. Language: English. Blue cloth over boards with red titles at the upper backstrip and a reproduction of the author's signature in red at the front panel. Weight: 15.5 ounces. Later Edition (undated) ; copyright is 1903. Hardback: Lacks DJ. Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski (1857 – 1924) was a Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language; though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he came to be regarded a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote novels and stories, many in nautical settings, that depict crises of human individuality in the midst of what he saw as an indifferent, inscrutable and amoral world. Conrad is considered a literary impressionist by some and an early modernist by others, though his works also contain elements of 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters, as in Lord Jim, for example, have influenced numerous authors. Many dramatic films have been adapted from and inspired by his works. Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew on the national experiences of his native Poland—during nearly all his life, parceled out among three occupying empires—and on his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world—including imperialism and colonialism—and that profoundly explore the human psyche. 'Youth' is narrated by Conrad's regular narrator, Charles Marlow, and was first published in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1898, and collected in the eponymous collection Youth, A Narrative; and Two Other Stories in 1902. Youth', Heart of Darkness and 'The End of the Tether' make up Conrad's most celebrated collection of short narratives. Heart of Darkness forms its sombre centrepiece: set in the Congo of the 1890s, this haunting and widely influential Modernist masterpiece explores the limits of human experience as well as the nightmarish realities and consequences of imperialism. "Youth" depicts a young man's first journey to the Far East. It is narrated by Charles Marlow who is also the narrator of Lord Jim, Chance, and Heart of Darkness. The narrator's introduction suggests this is the first time, chronologically, the character Marlow appears in Conrad's works (the narrator comments that he thinks Marlow spells his name this way). “Youth” is a dramatic rendering of Conrad’s experience on the vessel Palestine in 1881. The reason for the story’s lack of inner conflict, almost unique in Conrad’s work, is simple enough: it is the only personal story in which the would-be initiate learns nothing, being still too young to learn. The beautiful nautical detail of “Youth”, the thinness of its psycho-moral content, the clear but slightly mannered style, the recurring sentimentality of Marlow - these suggest what Conrad’s work would have been like had he not evolved important conflicts within himself, perhaps partially through the very process of his growth as a writer. With "Youth", Conrad introduces his alter ego, that of British high seas mariner Charles Marlow, here at age 42, reminiscing on a formative voyage when, at 20 years of age, he served as the ship's second mate. The story's "essential subject" is that of the "romantic egoist...whose ideal conception of his own personality leads to disaster and an ambiguous redemption. Perhaps Conrad's reading of Henry James was the inspiration for Marlow and for Marlow's role in 'Youth': to give tone to the narrative. Conrad must have felt at ease with the style which the use of Marlow allowed him. Here he possessed a character that could both tell and comment upon the story , permitting the author to adopt an indirect narrative approach through the sensitive central intelligence of one of the characters. Last in this volume, "The End of the Tether" tells a story of a legally blind captain who must continue to pilot his ship in order to provide for his family. These three stories are the exemplars of the genre. Any reader will be struck by the sheer vividness and freshness of these three stories. .