This specially commissioned selection of Conrads matchless short stories includes such favourites as Youth. a modern epic of the sea; The Secret Sharer. a thrilling psychological drama: An Outpost of Progress.a blackly comic prelude to Heart of Darkness; Amy Foster. a moving story of a shipwrecked, alienated Pole: and The Lagoon and Karain. two exotic, exciting Malay tales. II Conde and The Tale are subtle portrayals of bewildered outrage: An Anarchist and The Infomer are sardonic depictions of revolutionaries:and Prince Roman is a tale of magnificent, doomed heroisrn set in Conrads native Poland during the Uprising of 1831. Both those new to Conrads work and those familiar with his novels will delight in this wide-ranging collection.

The eleven short stories in this edition are taken from six of Conrads seven collections of stories, tales, and nouvelles or long short stories.Looseness of definitions here is deliberate because Conrad, like his publishers and such contemporaries as Henry James, used them unsystematically for any fiction where concision and rigorous selection were operative principles. Moreover, it is still evident today that subsequent attempts either to arrive at firm definitions of, or to distinguish between, tale, sketch and short story, are impossible (Shaw, 2o-1) and, I think, unrewarding. I prefer short story because short alerts us to the formal shaping, wroughtness and brevity treasured by Conrad and by such different practitioners as Poe, James and Kipling;, and because story retains a sense of the human teller and listener so characteristic of Conrads framed narratives. I take short,following Poe, to refer to any story that can be read comfortably in from a half-hour to one or two hours…

Introduction

Works Cited

Bibliography

Textual Note

from TALES OF UNREST 1898

An Outpost of Progress

The Lagoon

Karain: A Memory

from YOUTH: A NARRATIVE AND OTHER STORIES 1902

Youth: A Narrative

from TYPHOON AND OTHER STORIES 19o3

Amy Foster

from A SET OF SIX 19o8

An Anarchist (A Desperate Tale)

The Informer (An Ironic Tale)

I1 Conde (A Pathetic Tale)

from TWIXT LAND AND SEA 1912

The Secret Sharer

from TALES OF HEARSAY 1925

Prince Roman

The Tale