Lord Jim (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

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• Footnotes and endnotes
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• Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate

With Lord Jim, first published in 1900, Joseph Conrad transformed a tale of seafaring adventure into a subtle study of the meaning of honor and courage, loyalty and betrayal. When Jim, an idealistic merchant seaman and ship’s officer, abandons the supposedly sinking Patna and its passengers, he dashes his youthful dreams of glory in a single stroke. Condemned in court for his impetuous act of cowardice, Jim relegates himself to a life roaming the Far East.

Unforgettably told by Marlow, who also narrates Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the story of Lord Jim plumbs the mysteries of a man renounced by society but driven by a desire for redemption.

A. Michael Matin is a professor in the English Department of Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. He has published articles on various twentieth-century British and postcolonial writers, and has written the introduction and notes for the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction by Joseph Conrad.

Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each readers understanding of these enduring works.

With Lord Jim, first published in 1900, Joseph Conrad transformed a tale of seafaring adventure into a subtle study of the meaning of honor and courage, loyalty and betrayal. When Jim, an idealistic merchant seaman and ship's officer, abandons the supposedly sinking Patna and its passengers, he dashes his youthful dreams of glory in a single stroke. Condemned in court for his impetuous act of cowardice, Jim relegates himself to a life roaming the Far East.Unforgettably told by Marlow, who also narrates Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the story of Lord Jim plumbs the mysteries of a man renounced by society but driven by a desire for redemption.

A. Michael Matin is a professor in the English Department of Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. He has published articles on various twentieth-century British and postcolonial writers, and has written the introduction and notes for the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction by Joseph Conrad.

Biography

In 1886 he obtained British nationality and his Master's certificate in the British Merchant Service. Eight years later he left the sea to devote himself to writing, publishing his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1895. The following year he married Jessie George and eventually settled in Kent, where he produced within fifteen years such modern classics as Youth, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Typhoon, Nostromo, The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes. He continued to write until his death in 1924. Today Conrad is generally regarded as one of the greatest writers of fiction in English -- his third language. He once described himself as being concerned "with the ideal value of things, events and people" in the Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus he defined his task as "by the power of the written word ... before all, to make you see."

Author biography courtesy of Penguin Group (USA).