The Nature of a Crime
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The Nature of a Crime, the third of three collaborations between Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford, was originally written when the two men were living in Winchelsea, Sussex, in 1906, but not published in book form until 1924, shortly after Conrad's death. The story takes the form of a series of love letters written by the unnamed narrator to a married woman, who is visiting Rome. In them, he states his intention to commit suicide as he anticipates being found out in a financial scandal. This new edition includes both writers' prefaces, and Ford's description of his first collaboration with Conrad (on the novel Romance) as an appendix. Edited by Robert Hampson, it also includes an informative Afterword and is fully annotated.
Joseph Conrad
Polish author Joseph Conrad is considered to be one of the greatest English-language novelists, a remarkable achievement considering English was not his first language. Conrad’s literary works often featured a nautical setting, reflecting the influences of his early career in the Merchant Navy, and his depictions of the struggles of the human spirit in a cold, indifferent world are best exemplified in such seminal works as Heart of Darkness, Lord JimM, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, and Typhoon. Regarded as a forerunner of modernist literature, Conrad’s writing style and characters have influenced such distinguished writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, and George Orwell, among many others. Many of Conrad’s novels have been adapted for film, most notably Heart of Darkness, which served as the inspiration and foundation for Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now.
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