Lord Jim : Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, Sources, Criticism

This Norton Critical Edition provides the most authoritative text of Lord Jim yet published; it is based on the definitive third English edition, collated with the periodical version that appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine and with the first English edition.

All discrepancies have been checked against the second English edition and the second American edition; the resulting Textual Notes include over 500 substantive changes.

The text is thoroughly annotated, and the editor has added a "Glossary of Eastern and Nautical Terms."

"Backgrounds" includes the complete text of "Tuan Jim."

"Sources" is a special section edited for this Norton Critical Edition by Dr. Norman Sherry of the University of Liverpool, presenting his discoveries about the real-life counterpart of Lord Jim, the incidents described in the novel, and life in the Dutch East Indies in the nineteenth century.  Dr. Sherry is the author of Conrad's Eastern World.

Among the perspectives presented in "Criticism" are those of Hugh Clifford, Albert J. Guerard, Ian Watt, Fredric Jameson, J. Hillis Miller, Edward Said, Philip M. Weinstein, Paul B. Armstrong, Marianne DeKoven, and Daphana Erdinast-Vulcan.

JOSEPH CONRAD was born in Polish Ukraine on December 3, 1857, with the name Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. Orphaned at the age of eleven, Conrad spent the remainder of his youth in Switzerland and Cracow before joining the French marines. In 1878, he enlisted in the British Merchant Navy. Following sixteen years of service, Conrad launched his literary career in England. He published many novels and stories, including Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), and most famously, The Heart of Darkness (1899), inspired by his steamboat voyage on the Congo River. Although English was his third language (after Polish and French), Conrad’s rich and distinctive prose established him as one of England’s greatest novelists. Conrad died on August 3, 1924, in Kent, England.

Thomas C. Moser was Professor of English at Stanford University.  He received his Ph.D. from Harvard.  In addition to publishing widely in professional journals, Professor Moser wrote Joseph Conrad: Achievement and Decline, and edited Wuthering Heights: Text, Sources, Criticism.