Fiction · 1899
Heart of Darkness
Aboard a yawl moored in the Thames, the sailor Marlow tells how he took command of a river steamer for a European trading company in Africa and went upriver in search of Kurtz, an agent of exceptional reputation. Joseph Conrad’s novella was serialised in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1899 and published in book form in 1902.
Drawn in part from Conrad’s own journey up the Congo in 1890, the story has become one of the most discussed works of the century — for its prose, its structure, its account of colonial exploitation and the questions its representation of Africa has raised. Bibliomancer presents the text as written.
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Part of Modernity, Short Classics.
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About the author
1857–1924 · Victorian
Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in what is now Ukraine, to Polish parents exiled for their politics. He went to sea at sixteen, served in French and then British merchant ships for twenty years, rising to master, and began to write in English — his third language — in his late thirties. Almayer’s Folly (1895), Heart of Darkness (1899), Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907) and Under Western Eyes (1911) are among his works. He lived in the south of England, mostly in Kent, from 1896 until his death.
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