First published in 1911, Within the Tides is a collection of four short stories by Joseph Conrad. These stories originate from a group of old sailors swapping tales, and are all centered on the sea even if none of them ever really make it out to sea. Three of the four stories are from the perspective of a rugged, individualistic man. The other, The Partner, shows what happens when a man is not a rugged individualist.

A remarkable book, the story of Flora De Barral, daughter of the Great De Barral, a monumental swindler, and her love for the sea captain who married her. Marlow tells the story in his usual quiet manner which is so dramatic under the quiet, and shows Chance the master hand directing and interfering at any moment.

One of the most complex and darkest novellas of the human condition. Conrad's masterpiece continues to warn what unchecked power coupled with madness can bring. A moving exploration of the Congo and colonial Africa, Heart of Darkness has both entertained and enraged many, given its often controversial xenophobic underpinnings.

Amy Foster" is a short story by Joseph Conrad written in 1901, first published in the Illustrated London News (December 1901). A poor emigrant from Central Europe sailing from Hamburg to America is shipwrecked off the coast of England. The residents of nearby villages, at first unaware of the sinking, and hence of the possibility of survivors, regard him as a dangerous tramp and madman. He speaks no English; his strange foreign language frightens them, and they offer him no assistance. Eventually "Yanko Goorall" (as rendered in English spelling) is given shelter and employment by an eccentric...

-Kaspar Makan - The well-known shrill voice startled Almayer from his dream of splendid future into the unpleasant realities of the present hour. An unpleasant voice too. He had heard it for many years, and with every year he liked it less. No matter; there would be an end to all this soon. He shuffled uneasily, but took no further notice of the call. Leaning with both his elbows on the balustrade of the verandah, he went on looking fixedly at the great river that flowed-indifferent and hurried-before his eyes.

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide. The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A...

We knew him in those unprotected days when we were content to hold in our hands our lives and our property. None of us, I believe, has any property now, and I hear that many, negligently, have lost their lives; but I am sure that the few who survive are not yet so dim-eyed as to miss in the befogged respectability of their newspapers the intelligence of various native risings in the Eastern Archipelago. Sunshine gleams between the lines of those short paragraphs-sunshine and the glitter of the sea.

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...

-Kaspar Makan - The well-known shrill voice startled Almayer from his dream of splendid future into the unpleasant realities of the present hour. An unpleasant voice too. He had heard it for many years, and with every year he liked it less. No matter; there would be an end to all this soon. He shuffled uneasily, but took no further notice of the call. Leaning with both his elbows on the balustrade of the verandah, he went on looking fixedly at the great river that flowed-indifferent and hurried-before his eyes.

-An Outcast of the Islands- is my second novel in the absolute sense of the word; second in conception, second in execution, second as it were in its essence. There was no hesitation, half-formed plan, vague idea, or the vaguest reverie of anything else between it and -Almayer's Folly.- The only doubt I suffered from, after the publication of -Almayer's Folly, - was whether I should write another line for print. Those days, now grown so dim, had their poignant moments. Neither in my mind nor in my heart had I then given up the sea. In truth I was clinging to it desperately, all the more...