Typhoon and Other Stories: Introduction by Martin Seymour-Smith

Joseph Conrad’s long experience as a working seaman enriched and deepened his literary gifts, making him the most brilliant and convincing writer of seafaring’s greatest age. In the three sea stories collected here, he makes deft use of the maritime setting to enact moral dramas of men tested by the elements and by one another.

“The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’” has been hailed as Conrad’s earliest masterpiece. When a West Indian sailor on board the merchant ship Narcissus falls ill his conditi...