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First American Edition, first impression in trade cloth. Hard cover, 12mo, in the original light green linen-grain cloth with the titles and decoration blocked in black and red to front board featuring the logo of Appleton's Town & Country Library Series at top left and with titles below. More decoration to the spine in black, with the titles and castle logo blocked in gold. All edges trimmed. The half title page includes the Series statement in Gothic type. COLLATION: 1-335, [1], plus [10pp. publisher's catalogue,] [1].**CONDITION: Fine. Lacking dust jacket. Now in mylar.** "An Outcast of the Islands" is the second novel written by Conrad, and forms a prequel to the Malay story begun in 1895's "Almayer's Folly." The briefly noted "Almayer" character Peter Willems is here revisited by Conrad as a younger man. An over-confident cheat, gun-runner and general cad, Willems has a comeuppance after being caught embezzling funds from his Dutch employer, Hudig & Company, in Macassar, Malaysia. He presumes he will one day be made partner in the firm, when in fact he ends up being run out of town, loses all his friends and the goodwill of his ill-treated Malay-Portuguese wife and family. His youthful mentor Capt. Tom Lingard rescues him and relocates Willems to the remote trading outpost at Sambir, Borneo where he does not get along with the previous headman, Almayer. A new romantic obsession brings Willems into more strife, the trading post is attacked by an Arab rival and the story goes on from there.** Joseph Conrad's real life experiences as a mate onboard the tramp steamer Vidar on the Java Sea have been identified by scholars as the fictional basis for many of the characters and depictions of Malay life and culture in these novels. **Supino says this issue was bowdlerized, removing undue references to love and sex, to accord with the family- friendly Town and Country series. (p. 31). Cagle A.2.B (2). [Note: An additional first edition of this title is available in the "deluxe" binding --see our listing No. 9185.]
Ref: CONRD 9186
$375.00