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Lord Jim
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Lord Jim Hardcover - 2005

by Joseph Conrad

About this book

Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim follows the events that determine the fate of Jim, a young British seaman. Jim becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the hajj. When the ship begins taking in water and disaster is sure to follow, Jim joins his captain and other crewmembers in abandoning the ship and its passengers. The crew is saved by a French ship a few days later and soon learns that the Patna and its passengers were also rescued. The crew’s reprehensible actions are exposed. As a trial ensues, Jim must come to terms with his past.

Enter Marlow, sea captain and narrator of Lord Jim as well as three of Conrad’s other works (Heart of Darkness, Youth, and Chance). In spite of Jim’s moral unsoundness, Marlow befriends him during the trial and learns the full story of the Patna, which he relates to the reader.

The primary event of Lord Jim may have been based in part on an actual abandonment of a ship. On July 17, 1880, S.S. Jeddah sailed for Penang and Jeddah from Singapore with 778 men, 147 women, and 67 children on board. When the vessel began to leak, the crew abandoned the passengers, who were also travelling to Mecca for the hajj. On August 8, 1880, a French steamship found Jeddah, rescuing all of the pilgrims. An official inquiry followed, as it does in the novel.

Lord Jim is ranked 85th on Modern Library’s “100 Best” English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel has been adapted for film twice: Lord Jim (1925), directed by Victor Fleming, and Lord Jim (1965), directed by Richard Brooks and starring Peter O'Toole.

 

Summary

This compact novel, completed in 1900, as with so many of the great novels of the time, is at its baseline a book of the sea. An English boy in a simple town has dreams bigger than the outdoors and embarks at an early age into the sailor's life. The waters he travels reward him with the ability to explore the human spirit, while Joseph Conrad launches the story into both an exercise of his technical prowess and a delicately crafted picture of a character who reaches the status of a literary hero.

From the publisher

JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924) was one of the most remarkable figures in English literature. Born in Poland, and originally named Josef Teodor Konrad Walecz Korzeniowski, he went to sea at the age of seventeen and eventually joined the crew of an English vessel, becoming a British citizen in the process. He retired from the sea in 1894 and took up the pen, writing all his works in English, a language he had only learned as an adult. Despite this, he was a master stylist, both lush and precise. His outsider's eye gave him special insights into the moral dangers of the great age of European empires.

In his prefactory note to this novel, Conrad said, "When this novel first appeared in book form a notion got about that I had been bolted away with. Some reviewers maintained that the work starting as a short story had got beyond the writer's control. One or two discovered internal evidence of the fact, which seemed to amuse them. They pointed out the limitations of the narrative form. They argued that no man could have been expected to talk all that time, and other men to listen so long. It was not, they said, very credible. After thinking it over for something like sixteen years, I am not so sure about that. Men have been known, both in the tropics and in the temperate zone, to sit up half the night 'swapping yarns.' This, however, is but one yarn, yet with interruptions affording some measure of relief. . . ."

First Edition Identification

Lord Jim was originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900. William Blackwood & Sons published the first novel form of Lord Jim in the UK in 1900. Bound in pale green cloth, first editions state “1900” as the publication date on the title page with no additional printings listed. Within the 451 pages of first editions are multiple points of issue: on page 77, line 5, “any rate” is printed as one word; on page 226, “keep” is missing after “can” and “cure” should be “cured;” and on page 319, “his” is not aligned with the other words. First published in a limited print run of 2,105 copies, signed first editions of Lord Jim have sold for upwards of $9,000.

Details

  • Title Lord Jim
  • Author Joseph Conrad
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Pages 264
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Wildside Press
  • Date December 20, 2005
  • ISBN 9781557425126 / 1557425124
  • Weight 1.2 lbs (0.54 kg)
  • Dimensions 9 x 6 x 0.75 in (22.86 x 15.24 x 1.91 cm)
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

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