Project Gutenberg's Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard, by Joseph Conrad

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Title: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Author: Joseph Conrad

Release Date: January 9, 2006 [EBook #2021]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOSTROMO: A TALE OF THE SEABOARD ***

Produced by Judy Boss and David Widger

NOSTROMO

A TALE OF THE SEABOARD

By Joseph Conrad

"So foul a sky clears not without a storm." --SHAKESPEARE

TO JOHN GALSWORTHY

AUTHOR'S NOTE

"_Nostromo_" is the most anxiously meditated of the longer novels which
belong to the period following upon the publication of the "Typhoon"
volume of short stories.

I don't mean to say that I became then conscious of any impending change
in my mentality and in my attitude towards the tasks of my writing
life. And perhaps there was never any change, except in that mysterious,
extraneous thing which has nothing to do with the theories of art; a
subtle change in the nature of the inspiration; a phenomenon for which I
can not in any way be held responsible. What, however, did cause me some
concern was that after finishing the last story of the "Typhoon" volume
it seemed somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write
about.

This so strangely negative but disturbing mood lasted some little
time; and then, as with many of my longer stories, the first hint for
"Nostromo" came to me in the shape of a vagrant anecdote completely
destitute of valuable details.

As a matter of fact in 1875 or '6, when very young, in the West Indies
or rather in the Gulf of Mexico, for my contacts with land were short,
few, and fleeting, I heard the story of some man who was supposed to
have stolen single-handed a whole lighter-full of silver, somewhere on
the Tierra Firme seaboard during the troubles of a revolution.

On the face of it this was something of a feat. But I heard no details,
and having no particular interest in crime qua crime I was not likely to
keep that one in my mind. And I forgot it till twenty-six or seven
years afterwards I came upon the very thing in a shabby volume picked
up outside a second-hand book-shop. It was the