Lord Jim

LORD JIM: A TALE

JOSEPH CONRAD
(Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) was born in December 1857 in Berdichev (now in the Ukraine) of Polish parents. His father, a poet and translator, and his mother were exiled for nationalist activities and died when he was a child. He grew up and was educated informally in Lemberg (now L'viv) and Cracow, which he left for Marseilles and a career at sea in 1874. After voyages to the French Antilles, he joined the British Merchant Service in 1878, sailing first in British coastal waters and then to the Far East and Australia. In 1886, he became a British subject and received his captaincy certificate. In 1890, he was briefly in the Congo with a Belgian company. After his career at sea ended in 1894, he lived mainly in Kent. He married in 1896 and had two sons.

Conrad began writing, in his third language, in 1886. His first novels,
Almayer
'
s Folly
(1895) and
An Outcast of the Islands
(1896), were immediately hailed as the work of a significant new talent. He produced his major fiction from about 1897 to 1911, a period that saw the publication of
The Nigger of the
‘
Narcissus
' (1897),
Heart of Darkness
(1898–9),
Lord Jim
(1900) and the political novels
Nostromo
(1904),
The Secret Agent
(1907) and
Under Western Eyes
(1911). Considered ‘difficult', his writing received considerable critical acclaim, but not until 1914 after the appearance of
Chance
did it win a wide public. The dazzling narrative experiments and thematic complexities of Conrad's earlier fiction are largely absent from his later writings, pitched to a more popular audience.

Fame saw the offer of honorary degrees and a knighthood (both declined) capped by a triumphal publicity tour in America in 1923. In addition to novels, Conrad produced short stories, plays, several essays and two autobiographical volumes,
The Mirror of the Sea
(1906) and
A Personal Record
(1908–9). He died in August 1924 at the age of sixty-six.

ALLAN H
.
SIMMONS
is Reader in English Literature at St Mary's College, Strawberry Hill, London. Author of
Joseph Conrad
(2006) for Palgrave and
Heart of Darkness
for Continuum's
‘Reader's Guides Series' (2007), he edited the ‘Centennial Edition' of
The Nigger of the
‘
Narcissus
' for Everyman (1997) and coedited
Lord Jim:
Centennial Essays
(2000) and
Nostromo
:
Centennial Essays
(2004) for Rodopi of Amsterdam. Currently editing
Conrad in Context
for Cambridge University Press, he is General Editor of
The Conradian:
The Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
.

J
.
H
.
STAPE
has taught in universities in Canada, France and the Far East. Author of
The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad
(2007), he has edited
The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad
(1996) and Conrad's
Notes on Life and Letters
(2004) and coedited
A Personal Record
(2007) and Volumes VII and IX of
The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad
(2005 and forthcoming) for Cambridge University Press. He has also co-edited Conrad's
An Outcast of the Islands
and
The Rover
for Oxford World's Classics, and has written on Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, William Golding and Angus Wilson. He is Contributing Editor of
The Conradian
:
The Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society
(
UK
).

JOSEPH CONRAD

Lord Jim

A Tale

Edited with an Introduction by

ALLAN H. SIMMONS

With Notes and Glossaries by

J. H. STAPE

General Editor

J. H. STAPE

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN CLASSICS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London
WC2R 0RL
, England

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014,
USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin2, Ireland

(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,
Australia

(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New
Delhi – 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New
Zealand

(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,
Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL,
England

www.penguin.com

First published 1900

Published in Penguin Classics 2007

1

Introduction, Note on the Texts copyright © Allan H. Simmons,
2007

Author Biography, Chronology, Notes, Glossaries copyright © J. H.
Stape, 2007

Further Reading copyright © J. H. Stape and Allan H. Simmons,
2007

Map copyright © The Joseph Conrad Society (UK), 2007

All rights reserved

The moral right of the editors has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or
otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or
cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-192015-3

Allan H. Simmons should like to thank Captain Simon Culshaw, C. T. S. Marine Consultants, Ltd, for information.

J. H. Stape is grateful to the following individuals for sharing their expertise and answering enquiries: Katherine Baxter, Willem Mörzer Bruyns, Andrew Busza, Mario Curreli, Björg and Jeremy Hawthorn, Owen Knowles, Claudine Lesage, Ulrich Menzefricke, Marion Michael, Gene M. Moore, Mary Morzinski, Zdzislaw Najder, Norman Page, Véronique Pauly, Yasuko Shidara, Robert W. Trogdon and Cedric Watts.

We are both indebted to the work of the late Hans van Marle on Conrad's South-east Asia and to Don Shewan and The Joseph Conrad Society (UK) for facilitating the drawing of the map.

1857 Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, coat-of-arms Nalecz, is born on 3 December in Berdichev (Ukraine), the only child of the Polish poet and translator Apollo Korzeniowski and Ewelina (or Ewa), nee Bobrowska.

1862 Apollo Korzeniowski, his wife and son are exiled from Warsaw to Vologda, northern Russia.

1865 Ewa Korzeniowska dies of consumption.

1868–9 Permitted to leave Russia, Apollo Korzeniowski relocates to Austro-Hungarian territory with his son, first in Lemberg (now L'viv, Ukraine) and vicinity and then in Cracow, where he dies (May).

1870 Becomes the ward of his maternal grandmother and maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, and begins private studies with Adam Pulman, a medical student at Cracow's Jagiellonian University.

1873 Tours Vienna, Swiss Alps and northern Italy with Pulman. Private studies in Lemberg.

1874–7 Arrives in Marseilles to work for the shippers Delestang et Fils, sailing to the French Antilles in the
Mont
-
Blanc
and
Saint
-
Antoine
. A period of biographical mystery ensues, involving a possible brief side voyage to Venezuela, gunrunning in the Basque country for the doomed cause of the pretender to the Spanish throne and smuggling near Marseilles.

1878 After amassing debts and gambling losses, attempts suicide (February or March). Leaves Marseilles in the British steamer
Mavis
for Mediterranean waters (Malta and Constantinople) and then lands at Lowestoft, Suffolk. Employed
as ordinary seaman in the
Skimmer of the Sea
(Lowestoft to Newcastle).

1878–80 In the
Duke of Sutherland
(to Australia) and then the
Europa
(to Genoa, Sicily and Greece). Passes the British Merchant Service second mate's examination.

1880–85 Third mate in the
Loch Etive
(to Australia); second mate in the ill-fated
Palestine
(bound for Bangkok, but sinks in the Straits of Malacca), ships out of Singapore in the
Riversdale
(to Madras) and after crossing India by rail joins the
Narcissus
in Bombay (to Dunkirk). Passes the examination for first mate (1884).

1886 Second mate in the
Tilkhurst
(Hull to Wales, Singapore, Calcutta, Dundee). Submits first story, ‘The Black Mate', to a competition for
Tit-Bits
. Becomes a British subject and passes the captaincy examination, receiving his ‘Certificate of Competency as Master'.

1886–8 Second mate in the
Falconhurst
(London to Penarth); first mate in the
Highland Forest
(Amsterdam to Semarang) and
Vidar
(Singapore to Celebes and Borneo ports); captain of the
Otago
(to Bangkok, Australia and Mauritius).

1889 Living in Pimlico (London), begins
Almayer
'
s Folly
. Visits Bobrowski in the Ukraine.

1890 In the Congo Free State, working for the Belgian company Société Anonyme du Haut-Congo; second-in-command, then temporarily captain, of Congo River steamer
Roi des Belges
.

1891 Recuperating from African experience in the German Hospital, London, then in Geneva for hydrotherapy. On return, works for warehouse and shippers Barr, Moering, Company.

1891–4 First mate in the passenger clipper
Torrens
(to Australia), meeting John Galsworthy (1893), later novelist and playwright awarded a Nobel Prize. Second mate in the
Adowa
(Rouen to Quebec and Montreal, but making only a return voyage from London to Rouen as the company collapses). Sea career ends.

1894 Tadeusz Bobrowski dies. Meets Edward Garnett, his literary mentor and advisor, and Jessie George, his future wife. Though still looking for a berth, turns to professional authorship in earnest.

1895
Almayer
'
s Folly
. In Geneva in the spring for hydrotherapy, and in Paris in August on business for Fountaine (G. F. W.) Hope, his first English friend.

1896
An Outcast of the Islands
. After marrying Jessie George, honeymoons in Brittany (April–September), later settling in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, near Hope and family. Christmas holidays in Cardiff.

1897 Meets Henry James. Writes ‘The Return' and ‘Karain: A Memory'. Befriends American novelist Stephen Crane and R. B. Cunninghame Graham, socialist and writer.
The Nigger of the
‘
Narcissus
'.

1898 Alfred Borys Conrad born in Stanford.
Tales of Unrest
. Becomes friendly with Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford) and H. G. Wells. In Glasgow, looks for a command. The Conrads move to Pent Farm, near Hythe, Kent, sub-let from Ford. ‘Youth, A Narrative' in
Blackwood
'
s Magazine
.

1899 Works on
Lord Jim
.
Heart of Darkness
serialized in
Blackwood
'
s Magazine
. Meets Hugh Clifford, writer and civil servant in Malaya. The Boer War begins.

1900 Becomes a client of J. B. Pinker's literary agency. Crane dies. Working-holiday in Belgium with Ford.
Lord Jim
.

1901 Queen Victoria dies. Works on ‘Amy Foster', ‘Falk' and
Romance
(with Ford).
The Inheritors
(with Ford).

1902 The Boer War ends. Writes ‘The End of the Tether'.
Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories
.

1903 Works on
Nostromo
.
Typhoon and Other Stories
and
Romance
(with Ford) appear.

1904 Two-month sojourn in London. Engages ‘typewriter' Lilian M. Hallowes, his secretary on and off for twenty years.
Nostromo
.

1905 In Capri (January–May).
One Day More
staged in London. Writes sea papers and critical articles.

1906 In Montpellier (mid-February–mid-April). John Alexander Conrad born in London.
The Mirror of the Sea
.

1907 In Montpellier (January–May). Writes ‘The Duel', and then in Geneva (May–August)
The Secret Agent
. The Conrads move to Luton, Bedfordshire.