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First American Edition, first impression. Hard cover, 16mo, in blue linen-like cloth with titles within a reverse printed art deco style frame with a sailing vessel below, the titles to the spine in gold, top edge stained ochre, the half title with ship logo to bottom right and title page opposite a ruled box containing list of "Books by the Same Author." Copyright: states 1916 copyright to Metropolitan Magazine Company, with Doubleday Page & Co. copyright 1917. COLLATION, unsigned, [2], [i-vi], [1-2][3] ,4-197 [198] [4]pp.**CONDITION:Very Good. Lacking dust jacket. One signature highly age-toned, the rest is acceptably mildly aged toned as expected. **The narrator, a young first mate of an Arab-owned steamship in the Malay Archipelago, quits his job suddenly in what we might today recognize as the queazy dissatisfaction of a twenty-something's quarter-life crisis. This leads to a series of events in which older and perhaps wiser heads recognize the young man's promise, and he is appointed his first command as Captain. He travels out by steamer to Bankok (sic) in happy ignorance of the complications his new appointment will entail. The former captain died aboard the vessel, having derelicted his duties, apparently gone mad. Cholera and malaria affect the crew, and the first mate, Mr. Burns, is resentful of not being promoted. There is a sense of the ship being cursed by its late captain which pervades the plot. An unhappy challenge awaits as the ship is becalmed, a storm approaches, and the men are ill without resort to the proper medicine. Conrad states the book was written in its entirety in the last three months of 1916 and harkened back to his own experience as new captain on a merchant ship in the Indian ocean, and the accompanying transitions from youth to maturity. Supino A20.4.0. in "Joseph Conrad A Bibliographical Catalogue of Editions to 1930", (Liverpool Univ. Press, 2022.)
Ref: CONRD 9217
$95.00