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LORD JIM

BY JOSEPH CONRAD



AUTHOR'S NOTE


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; and in regard to the listeners' endurance, the postulate
must be accepted that the story was interesting. It is the necessary
preliminary assumption. If I hadn't believed that it was interesting I
could never have begun to write it. As to the mere physical possibility
we all know that some speeches in Parliament have taken nearer six than
three hours in delivery; whereas all that part of the book which is
Marlow's narrative can be read through aloud, I should say, in less than
three hours. Besides--though I have kept strictly all such insignificant
details out of the tale--we may presume that there must have been
refreshments on that night, a glass of mineral water of some sort to
help the narrator on.

But, seriously, the truth of the matter is, that my first thought was
of a short story, concerned only with the pilgrim ship episode; nothing
more. And that was a legitimate conception. After writing a few pages,
however, I became for some reason discontented and I laid them aside for
a time. I didn't take them out of the drawer till the late Mr. William
Blackwood suggested I should give something again to his magazine.

It was only then that I perceived that the pilgrim ship episode was a
good starting-point for a free and wandering tale; that it was an event,
too, which could conceivably colour the whole 'sentiment of existence'
in a simple and sensitive character. But all these preliminary moods
and stirrings of spirit were rather obscure at the time, and they do not
appear clearer to me now after the lapse of so many years.

The few pages I had laid aside were not without their weight in the
choice of subject. But the whole was re-written deliberately. When I sat
down to it I knew it would be a long book, though I didn't foresee that
it would spread itself over thirteen numbers of Maga.

I have been asked at times whether this was not the book of mine I liked
best. I am a great foe to favouritism in public life, in private life,
and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works. As a
matter of principle I will have no favourites; but I don't go so far
as to feel grieved and annoyed by the preference some people give to

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