Joseph Conrad Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Plays

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Vintage Voyages Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Joseph Conrad real name Jozef Teodor Konrad was a Ukrainian born turned English author born in Berdichev of Ukraine. He was born to Evelina and Apollo Korzeniowski, two polish nobles who were involved in a conspiracy to undermine Russian rule that saw them sent to Vologda as a punishment. They took with them the four year old Conrad, but died several years later leaving Conrad to the care of his uncle in Poland. Conrad got what may be best described as sporadic education as he got literary instruction from his father, went to public school while they lived in Krakow, before he proceeded to private schooling. He left home aged 16 and headed to Marseilles in France where he joined the merchant marine. His uncle had a merchant friend who helped him get a job on French merchant ships as an apprentice before he got promotion to become steward. His travels with the marine took him to South America and the West Indiies where he may have been a participant in gun smuggling. After a miserable period where he fell into debt and even attempted suicide, he found work with the British merchant marine where he stayed for more than a decade eventually earning British citizenship. During those years he had traveled to as far places as Australia, Africa, Singapore ,and India which provided fantastic experiences that he would later capture in his novels.

He would quit the merchant marine and get married to Jessie Emmeline George in 1896, with whom he got two children. He also became friends with eminent writers the likes of H.G. Wells, Ford Madox Ford, and John Galsworthy. He made his debut into the literary world with “Almayer’s Folly”, a novel set in the exotic Borneo jungle that was published in 1895. The turn of the century saw him churn out some of his most popular novels that included the 1900 published “Lord Jim” and “Heart of Darkness” that came out in 1902 to establish his reputation as one of England’s best ever fiction writers. Conrad’s novels have a signature theme of faraway setting, racial prejudice, violence in human nature, individualism, nature’s brutality, and dramatic conflict. After achieving much success with his earlier works, Conrad published several more novels and short story collections and a memoir in 1912 titled “A Personal Record”. Most of his earlier works were serialized in magazines with some of his works such as “Almayer’s Folly”, “Lord Jim”, and “Heart of Darkness” made into movies. Conrad died in his home in Canterbury 1924, a year after publishing “The Rover” his last known work. Among the writers he had a great influence on included the likes of William Faulkner, Albert Camus, Virginia Woolf, Graham Green, and T.S. Eliot.

Joseph Conrad had started writing his debut title “Almayer’s Folly” in 1889 as he waited for instructions from his merchant marine high command. As a child in Poland, he had once put his finger on the center of a map of Africa and declared I will go here when I am grown. Using his influence he traveled to Brussels and got himself assigned command of a steamboat going to the Congo Free State. His feelings, deeds, and experiences are chronicled in his novel “Heart of Darkness” that is the most enigmatic and famous of all his works. The title is often synonymous with the malignment, nihilism, corruption and everything evil that he found in the Congo, and in the hearts of men that inhabited it. In 1896 he wrote An “Outcast of the Islands”, a novel that just like Almayer’s Folly was about a superficial character that meets his tragic end after his pride takes him into a land of savages, where his fellow Europeans are unable to save him. The novels made Conrad’s name as a man that wrote short stories about the sea and exotic lands that were only confirmed with the publishing of “Typhoon”, “Youth” and “Lord Jim”.

“Almayer’s Folly” was Joseph Conrad’s debut novel that introduced many of the themes that he would write about over the course of a very influential and successful career. In the novel he explores aspects of race, colonialism, the river and sea trade. He relates this to the differences between Western and Eastern cultures, European colonists and natives, and a never ending journey in the quest to determine how evil and good are related. The novel is not very dissimilar to “Heart of Darkness” though its multiple intrigues and twists and turns of plot bear closer resemblance to “Victory”. The most interesting aspect of the novel is the hostile relationship between the Malayan wife and her European colonist husband Almayer. Almayer is shackled by his misplaced sense of racial identity,and greed for gold that is almost maniacal, which makes his wife hate his guts. The two are frequently engaged in a fight over their daughter Nina who may be a great personification of one of Conrad’s favorite themes of colonial tension as a result of duality.

“Heart of Darkness” is Joseph Conrad’s most celebrated work given its multilayered narrative that delve into all manner of themes about human nature. Marlow is in Africa, obsessed with a search for Kurtz, a European colonist that had become a ruler among the natives of Congo Free State. The novel is a glimpse into the dark heart of a man whose mind approximates Dante’s descent to hell. Conrad tells a powerful narrative that evoke impressions that are subjective in their analysis of human nature. Regardless of whether it is his native assistant, Marlow, or Kurtz, the search for the lost man might mean that Marlow needs to find his ideals or is looking to find a sick man who would be better off in a hospital. Kurtz who has been in Africa for several years is an enigmatic character who loves to tell himself that he is lifting the natives from their primitivism, even as he enriches himself by trading in ivory. Marlow is of course outraged when he learns of the evil ways that Kurtz has been conducting himself that include murder and subsequent hanging of the severed heads in his hut as one would a trophy. But Kurtz just like Marlow had come down to Africa full of idealism only to get sucked into the savagery and ways of life of the native. He was now lost and had no hope of ever getting out and living a normal life of civilization.